This year, the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center celebrates its 40th anniversary and the incredible journey it has undergone since opening on June 14, 1986. Beginning as a small museum focused on teaching the public about local ecosystems, the facility has grown from one public building to two, and undergone major expansions in its exhibits, the resident animals, staff and volunteer force, and its mission to conserve the marine environment.
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May
The First Waves
In 1980, City Council appointed three task forces to develop the Virginia Marine Science Museum (VMSM), and in 1981, nearly three years before construction started, the Virginia Marine Science Museum Foundation formed with a single initial purpose to support funding for the Museum’s exhibits. Sandy Wood, a volunteer who has worked as a gallery docent since September 1986, remembers the first local sparks that led to the Museum’s development.
“Mac Rawls, the first Director, was my high school biology teacher,” Sandy recalled of the early days. “And he always talked about, ‘Here we are, sitting on the oceanfront. Why don’t we have some kind of aquarium or something with sea animals for people to see?’ so I’d been hearing about [the concept] for years through him.”
In January of 1982, Mac hired the first full-time employee for the potential museum, Mark Swingle. A William & Mary biology student, Mark received his master’s degree in oceanography from Old Dominion University and was working in construction when a coworker heard about the possibility of a new museum in the area, and suggested Mark write a letter.
“I got to see that early development, and how we went through about three or four different names [for the facility] before we settled,” said Mark, who is formally retired but still works as a conservation consultant for the Aquarium and sea turtle programs. “At one point it was going to be the Virginia Beach Museum of Marine Science.”
The following year, the Foundation successfully lobbied the Virginia General Assembly for $2 million to construct the Museum, the largest appropriation granted at the time to a non-state museum. The City quickly approved an additional $4.5 million afterwards to help construct Phase I, and another $2 million came through a capital campaign in 1984.
While the building was under construction, staff partnered with local fishermen to collect animals for the upcoming Museum. These first animals were housed across the street at Camp Pendleton in barracks buildings that were outfitted with aquatic habitats to sustain them in the years before opening.
“We were mostly in the Bay,” Mark recalled of animal acquisitions. “A few times we did some haul seining on the ocean. We also went down to North Carolina and collected some animals from fishing piers and the beach.”
Initially, the Museum started off as a single building measuring 41,500 square feet on a mere nine-acre campus. This building, now known as the North Building, once consisted of just the current ticket lobby area, the store, the Upland River Room, the Chesapeake Bay Galleries and Aquarium, and the space that is now the Restless Planet Gallery.
Chris Witherspoon, current Vice President of Science Education, was first hired as an entry-level educator on June 1, 1986, two weeks before the Museum officially opened. At the time, the team was still in the process of moving animals from Camp Pendleton into aquariums in the new building.
“The first few weeks we were getting ready to move animals, so it was a little hectic learning on the fly,” Chris said of her first days at work.
On opening day on June 14, City officials hosted a grand ceremony outside with a ribbon cutting to welcome people to the Virginia Marine Science Museum. Mark worked that day, but was not able to attend, as he and fellow staff member Maylon White (later the Director of the North Carolina Aquariums) were powering through the finishing touches to the exhibits.
“We missed the entire opening ceremony because we were inside making last-minute adjustments to things right before people came in,” said Mark.
Phase I of the VMSM hosted 218,000 visitors within the first 18 weeks of operation, exceeding projections by 25%. It quickly became the most attended museum in Virginia, welcoming an average of 325,000 visitors annually. At the time, the core theme was "The Journey of Water," illustrating how water moves through Virginia from the mountains to the sea. The exhibits followed this journey from the rivers to the Chesapeake Bay, then the Atlantic Ocean, and highlighted the importance of these aquatic habitats to the plants and animals they support, as well as for drinking water and recreation. The early Museum also featured exhibits on sands and beaches; the Chesepioc nation’s culture and later watermen communities; and hurricanes and weather, with weather instruments on the roof that fed data to their displays in the galleries.
Back then, all of the programs and exhibits were supported by a small group of roughly 12 employees who were not strictly confined to one field of work or another. Karen Burns, current Vice President of Conservation, remembers this time fondly.
“It was a great opportunity to do everything,” said Karen, who was hired in 1993 as a part-time educator and eventually helped develop the scout overnight program. “I worked in an educational capacity but once I was in the facility, I decided I was going to do everything because this was such a cool job. The store would open in the morning after Girl Scout overnights and be inundated with Girl Scouts wanting to shop, so we jumped in and helped store staff. I worked really closely with the aquarists in the early days and would help them with food prep. My first few years as a part-time employee gave me the opportunity to explore all the things that were happening here.”
Sean Bourgeois, current Director of Facilities, also recalls earning experience in a wide variety of duties. Though he started off as a part-time operations manager in the summer of 1991, he also eventually worked in technical exhibits, as an aquarist, and as a Stranding Response research technician. He also conducted outreach programs, ocean collections trips, and whale and dolphin watching tours.
“It was a very close-knit group of employees,” Sean remarked. “We were a much smaller facility, and we did a lot of things together as staff.”
At the time, roughly 20 volunteers also supported the team, as intended by the Museum’s founders. “We’ve always had volunteers,” said Sandy. “Mac was really about that, like ‘This is part of the City, and we need to showcase our City as a whole, and people coming in from all walks of life, willing to give time to work.’ When it came out in the paper that the Museum was looking for volunteers, I thought 'Okay, I'll do this for Mac.'”
I’ve always felt that it’s a really special place. A lot of people in the community feel the same way because, you know, they grew up taking their kids there. We’ve also reached a lot of national and international tourists that travel here. I think we created something that has left a lasting legacy for the area.
Community Impact
The Museum’s primary conservation focus was educating the public about the marine environment. Although the Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the country, according to Karen, “people have lived here their whole lives and know so little about it. We have to educate them about it to preserve and conserve it.”
By 1989, the Foundation began supporting the development of an outreach program to bring marine science education programs to local schools, which continue today. Around this time, they established scout programs as well, becoming one of the first aquariums to introduce scout overnights. They also introduced boat tours to the public, taking education and conservation efforts beyond the Museum’s walls.
For a time, the Museum hosted their own changing exhibits in an area that later became the Komodo Dragon Exhibit, including features on jellies, sea stars, waterfowl photography, and sea turtles. The stingray touch pool experience also started off as a changing exhibit before becoming a permanent fixture that guests still enjoy today.
Although the VMSM first focused solely on education, locals almost immediately began to call the Museum once it opened about stranded marine mammals and sea turtles spotted in the area. Museum staff started responding to these calls by 1989.
“Thing is, we didn’t have any expertise in that area, even though we were marine biologists” said Mark, thinking back. “When we started, we were basically volunteering. We just went out because we were really interested in marine life. By doing that, we met people who were stranding professionals, primarily from the Smithsonian, the National Museum of Natural History. But of course, they were coming from DC, so they tried to respond to all major strandings along the East Coast, but they couldn’t get to everything. And the Virginia Institute of Marine Science had some experts there as well who would respond to strandings when they had time.”
In 1987, Virginia became the center point of a major die-off of dolphins that stranded in the area, which brought some of the world’s leading experts to Virginia Beach and the Chesapeake Bay region. This contact with top marine mammal scientists sparked the genesis of an official stranding response team at the Museum. The Foundation eventually agreed to fund a new Stranding Response Program that would officially open in 1991 with less than five employees on call.
This program would eventually grow to roughly 10 staff with supporting volunteers who produce significant contributions to sea turtle and marine mammal research and conservation on the East Coast. In 2001 alone, the program individually identified and recorded around 1,000 bottlenose dolphins and 50 humpback whales for field research to build identification catalogues for marine mammals. Later, by 2021, Stranding Response operations moved from a small, older facility into the new Darden Marine Animal Conservation Center (DMACC), a state-of-the-art facility providing space for sea turtle and seal rehabilitation, examination rooms and laboratory space, and much-needed office space for Aquarium scientists. “The fact that we have DMACC now is incredible,” commented Karen. “In the early days, we would do necropsies on tables behind the Museum.” This gave them the room to expand rehab capacity, a boon when considering they responded to a record-breaking 77 cold-stunned sea turtles in the fall and winter of 2024-2025.
In 2008, the Aquarium took further steps in supporting community conservation for the environment by establishing its Sensible Seafood Program . This program aims to educate consumers and advocate for responsible fishing practices to sustain seafood populations for the future. Local restaurants and seafood providers who partner with the program make sustainability a priority in their operations. As of June 2026, the program has 14 businesses committed to Sensible Seafood, many of whom have been committed to the cause for years. The program also provides a Virginia Seafood Guide to help consumers make responsible choices in what seafood they buy and when.
Rising Tides
After eight successful years, in 1994 the Foundation launched a second capital campaign that earned $5 million to expand the building for Phase II. Opening in 1996, the expansion added over 500,000 gallons of new aquariums featuring sea turtles and sharks, plus the Nature Trail and the new Marsh Pavilion (now the South Building). The trail and Marsh Pavilion brought people closer to the local salt marsh ecosystems – less glamorous than large marine life, but which helped teach visitors why these ecosystems are critical to the region’s environmental health.
Attendance after these renovations jumped to over 640,000 guests per year. “The Phase II renovation was really huge,” said Sean. “I think the opening of that 1996 building saw some of our biggest attendance. We more than tripled in size, so it’s not surprising.”
2009 saw another renovation where the old changing exhibits room and connected spaces transformed into what is now the Restless Planet gallery. Focused on showcasing lost ecosystems from prehistoric Virginia, this area houses exotic species such as Komodo dragons, Tomistomas, spotted eagle rays, a zebra shark, an Egyptian cobra, live corals, and other species not otherwise found in Virginia.
“These animals are not from Virginia and never were,” said Karen, “but they’re the kinds of animals Virginia could have supported millions of years ago. It opened people up to species that would not have otherwise fit into the traditional Virginia flora and fauna. It was exciting to staff, too!”
Strides in Conservation
Along with bringing guests face-to-face with unusual species for an aquarium, these expansions have allowed the staff to research and even breed certain animals to support conservation efforts through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ (AZA) Species Survival Plans (SSP). One success includes two female Tomistoma that hatched at the Virginia Aquarium in September 2022, which provided the first new viable genetics to the Tomistoma population across U.S. facilities in nearly 50 years.
“I think in the industry, everybody was expanding their conservation effort at the same time, everybody was putting more emphasis on it,” Sean recalled. “Most of our conservation work was with dolphins and local species, so that renovation opened us up to Tomistomas and Komodos. It’s when we started getting more involved with coral and reef conservation and restoration work with SECORE . [The Tomistoma reproduction] was pretty monumental for us as a smaller regional facility to be able to do that.”
Today, staff and volunteers from the Virginia Aquarium take part in SSPs for sharks, sea turtles, and spotted eagle rays. They also conduct osprey research through Osprey Watch , the StAR Zebra Shark Project , sea coral research and restoration, and even a repopulation project for critically-endangered Lake Victoria cichlids, half of whose global population resides at the Virginia Aquarium.
Eventually, leadership took time to evaluate the Museum’s purpose and identity, and after lengthy consultation, opted to change the name to the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center. The facility also changed the logo from the lookdown fish to a sea turtle, which outside consultants pointed out better incorporated the Stranding Response Program’s connection to the Aquarium as well. Per Chris, part of the reason for the change was that incorporating the word “aquarium” better represented what guests would encounter upon visiting. The Aquarium would retain its commitment to featuring live animals along with hands-on exhibits that enhance the experience. This formula has supported guest satisfaction since 1986.
What Remains the Same
Regardless of the Aquarium’s evolution, the mission has always remained the same: inspire people about the importance of conservation of the Chesapeake Bay and the marine environment.
“It’s about giving visitors examples of actions they can take to make it all a better place for wildlife and humans sharing the same space,” Chris remarked.
To accomplish this, the Aquarium has consistently boasted a team of staff and volunteer educators interacting face-to-face with guests in our galleries. Their passion for their work, according to the longtime staff, has also never changed.
“I’ve been to aquariums and zoos literally across the world and we are the only one that regularly has paid staff on the floor and exhibits talking to guests,” Karen remarked. “We had feedback surveys on paper before the internet, and 90% of people were impressed that they got to talk to somebody. That has never changed and has always been important to our facility.”
“People would comment how refreshing it was that they got more than they did when they went to other places,” said Chris. “They’ll say ‘Well, you might not have been as big as other aquariums we’ve been to, but what we really liked was talking to staff members. In every other place we go to, the only people you talk to are when you buy your ticket or go to the store.’ It’s what we’ve done since the beginning.”
According to Mark, countless families as well as professionals have come and gone through the Aquarium’s doors to learn about marine science and foster a better understanding of ocean and aquatic life, as well as how to protect them.
“From an education and science standpoint, the Virginia Aquarium has made a huge impact over its time,” he said. “I think the City of Virginia Beach and even the Commonwealth of Virginia should be very proud of the fact that we have this facility. It has trained and nurtured a tremendous number of professional staff that have gone on to really great careers. That's another important component of it that I’m very proud of.”
The Virginia Aquarium team is proud of the strides it has made over so many years to expand its mission and influence, and looks forward to many more years serving the community and protecting the marine environment for generations to come.
It's been a good ride.
