THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606200641
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: SPECIAL EDITION: A VISITOR'S GUIDE TO THE EXPANDED VIRGINIA MARINE
SCIENCE MUSEUM
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER
STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 105 lines
If you're looking for stunts and glitz - dolphins jumping through hoops, say, or seals bouncing balls on their noses - the Virginia Marine Science Museum isn't the place for you.
The $36.7 million expansion of the museum - and the rest of the facility as well - aims to be a more thoughtful, but perhaps more challenging, crowd-pleaser: an educational adventure into Virginia's marine ecosystems.
``The message we're after is pretty simple: What's in your back yard here in Virginia is important and valuable,'' says museum director C. Mac Rawls. ``And when you realize its importance - when you see it firsthand, see it all connected - you want to preserve it.''
To grasp what the Virginia Marine Science Museum is really trying to do, relax and set sail.
Visitors are asked to imagine themselves drifting quietly down the freshwater James River, through the industrial confluence of Hampton Roads, into the brackish Chesapeake Bay, past the salt marshes and wind-blown dunes around Cape Henry, and finally into the deep, green Atlantic Ocean.
``It's all based on a journey of water through the state of Virginia,'' Rawls explains. ``Everything here is indigenous. And a lot of people are surprised by that. You don't really associate whales and sea turtles with Virginia. You think crabs and fish. But they're all here.''
That runs counter to the features at many other marine museums and aquariums. They highlight far-away exotic places, or offer Sea World-type animal shows. In Chicago's John G. Shedd Aquarium, for example, there are exhibits dedicated to the wonders of the ocean - even though the nearest one is hundreds of miles away.
In Virginia Beach, where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean, with beaches, streams, marshes and wildlife refuges in abundance, museum directors can afford to keep a local focus.
The museum expansion, which officially opens today, represents the salt marsh and the ocean, the last two legs of a Virginia marine journey.
In the salt marsh, as captured in the Owls Creek Marsh Pavilion, there is a range of wildlife, from frisky river otters to tiny snails to simple Spartina grass.
A giant mud flat has been re-created out of plaster to make visitors feel as if they're wading through the mud, just like a fiddler crab scurrying for cover from a stalking heron.
Then, it's back to reality. Visitors can walk down a wooded path offering scenic views of the real Owls Creek, which, with the aid of a telescope, can be seen spilling into the ocean at Rudee Inlet.
That path ends at the newest of the museum's three main buildings, a tall modern structure dedicated to ocean life. Inside, a giant shark tank has been created, along with a mock lighthouse and an up-close exhibit devoted to endangered sea turtles.
There's an environmental message, but Rawls, a former Virginia Beach science teacher, says he and other museum planners and architects never wanted the message to sound like a lecture.
Instead, they want to show the delicate interconnectedness of nature on the one hand and its resiliency and ability to adapt to man's encroachment on the other.
``One of the most boring things is to preach to people,'' says Rawls. ``This is not an opinionated exhibit. We want to get people thinking on their own. We're not saying, `Look out, this all is disappearing!' ''
The museum was careful about disturbing the real Tidewater environment in order to manufacture a microcosm indoors. In building the expansion, museum planners spoiled less than one-tenth of an acre of wetlands, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which regulated the project.
To counter the damage, as required by law, the museum restored lost wetlands at a 2-to-1 ratio, according to the corps. ``They were very, very careful,'' a corps spokesman in Norfolk says. ``It looks quite nice now.''
In choosing what to exhibit, staffers got together around a table and brainstormed, while an architect took notes, Rawls says.
Each suggestion had to pass the following litmus test: 1) Does it increase people's knowledge of the marine environment? 2) Is it fun? and 3) Is it real?
One idea that failed the test was the notion of a huge indoor tank filled with dolphins netted in the wild. Such tanks were popular at other aquariums. But animal-rights groups and environmentalists have protested the capture of wild dolphins, and some tanks have been closed.
Rawls says the idea was dropped because ``it just didn't meet our mission.'' The staff also felt it would be too expensive and too difficult to construct a tank large enough to satisfy the needs of the dolphins.
``It seemed a lot better to continue our boat tours,'' which take visitors out to the ocean off Virginia Beach to observe dolphins in the wild, Rawls says. (The trips start Monday, as dolphins begin to arrive for their annual breeding season off the Virginia coast.)
One idea that fit the museum's goal of keeping animals in a natural setting can be found in the marsh. An osprey nesting tower has been constructed on Owls Creek, far enough from a pathway that the birds cannot be bothered while mating.
But the nest is close enough for a camera to capture the daily activities of any osprey family living there. Those images may be taped and replayed on a video screen in the Owls Creek Marsh Pavilion.
``If we had built this expansion 10 years ago when we started, we'd have put the buildings right next to each other,'' Rawls says. ``But as we got out here on the creek, we saw the birds, the pelicans and we wanted to extend the experience out here.
``I think we made the right call.'' ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTOPHER REDDICK
The Virginian-Pilot
THE MAIN BUILDING AS CONSTRUCTION NEARED COMPLETION, THE EXPANSION
TRIPLES THE SIZE OF THE MUSEUM. by SS