Conversations About Conservation: An Evaluation
of Guide/Guest Interactions and Guide Training at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Elin Kelsey, Ph.D.
Purpose
This evaluation addresses the question of how successfully the Guide Training Program of the Monterey Bay Aquarium equips guides to engage guests in conversations about marine conservation. It further serves to explore the influence of individual and institutional identities on conservation-based informal learning experiences.
Theoretical Framework
This research is based within a constructivist learning
framework that recognizes knowledge as being individually and socially
constructed. For example, recognizing that “conservation” means different
things to different people, the project team adopted a two-pronged approach
to evaluation criteria: Firstly, open-ended interviews and focus groups
were used to garner a better understanding of the diversity of conceptions
guides currently hold with respect to conservation. Secondly, the project
team identified a list of criteria that represented successful conversations
about conservation. The evaluation used qualitative research methods,
specifically, participant-observation, interviews and, focus groups.
Key Findings Relating to the Nature of Guide/Guest Encounters
1. Guides demonstrate excellence in modeling care for aquatic life.
Monterey Bay Aquarium Guides create a warm and inviting atmosphere for learning. As a group, they excel at modeling enthusiasm and caring for aquatic life, while representing the institution in a highly professional manner.
Forging an emotional connection with nature is one of the cornerstones of conservation education and modeling is a key informal education mechanism through which such emotional connections are inspired. Several incidences of this type of Guide/Guest encounter were observed on each shift. Guides praise children for their careful handling of invertebrates: “Thank you for being so gentle with the animals, they really appreciate it.” They use emotive language to appeal to the nurturing side of guests, as demonstrated by this guide who is talking about a sea cucumber: “He’s so soft, you just want to protect him, don’t you?” And, “I love these leopard sharks. They’re my favorite fish at the Aquarium. They’re so misunderstood.” Some guides also move beyond the individual animal or plant to beach etiquette and its importance to aquatic ecosystems: “When you see algae on the beach you want to leave it where you see it because it makes oxygen.”
While modeling values for aquatic life was most easily observed at the touch pool exhibits in the near shore galleries and Splash Zone, it was also regularly expressed at the Marine Mammal Cart and the Kelp Forest exhibit.
The dynamic at the Bat Ray cart deserves special mention with respect to emotional response. During each observed shift, guides were repeatedly questioned about why the bat rays were congregating and “flapping” against the backside of the exhibit. This was the most common visitor initiated question at this station. A number of guests interpreted the behavior as signs that the animals wanted out of the exhibit. Some voiced specific concerns about the animals’ welfare: “I’m really anxious about the bat rays. They seem so unhappy.” Guides most frequently responded with two possible explanations for the animals’ behavior: Firstly, they explained that bat rays in the wild do the same thing. In Elkhorn Slough, for instance, bat rays congregate along mud banks and the animals in this exhibit may be treating the back wall in the same manner. Alternatively, they explained that bat rays have special organs that are sensitive to metal, and that they may be attracted to rebar in the back wall of the exhibit.
When questioned about the explanations they had just
been given, the guests who had voiced concerns continued to express them:
“I’m no expert on rays, but it just doesn’t look right.” A follow-up investigation
of visitor response to the bat ray exhibit in light of the Aquarium’s
increased conservation focus, and the re-development of the near-shore
galleries could prove valuable.
2. Guide encounters are dominated by “mini-scripts.”
Guide/guest interactions might best be characterized as “mini scripts” or predetermined statements that guides tend to pair with specific animals or props. While guides do engage in guest-initiated conversations, there is a strong tendency to default to specific mini-scripts for each station. These statements are repeatedly frequently and are sometimes shared across shifts and individuals. At the touch pools, for example, “sea cucumbers and chitons are the vacuum cleaners of the sea” and “sea urchins feel like a hairbrush.” At the marine mammal cart, guests are asked: “Would you like to touch a sea otter pelt? It has one million hairs per square inch.” And, “Can you guess what gray whales eat?” This question is followed by a generalized description of baleen whale feeding adaptations using the baleen and krill samples on the cart.
At the mid-water lab and the plankton lab, guides tend to move from one prop to another, repeating particular mini-scripts for each prop or piece of apparatus.
The use of mini-scripts appears to be effective in drawing guests into stations. They also provide a level of consistency in response between guides. However, widespread reliance on predetermined statements may impede guide/guest encounters in a number of ways:
- Encounters are guide-driven, not guest-driven.
- The same type of encounter is repeated with each guest (i.e., encounters are not responsive to guest age, interests, etc; current events; or the animal being observed).
- By relying on the same descriptions, guides appear less able to see alternative ways of interpreting the animals or issues represented at each station, and less able to incorporate new enrichment information into their encounters with guests.
- Mini-scripts reflect a one-way transmission model of learning (i.e., the “expert” guide tells something to the “novice” guest).
- Mini-scripts often take the form of naming, rather than facilitating, the observation of an animal or plant (i.e., “that’s a feathered boa, deadman’s fingers, palm kelp, and my favorite, bull kelp.”).
- Mini-scripts are predictable; guides appear to be less comfortable engaging in authentic, spontaneous conversations with guests where the subject is more far-reaching or less familiar. (This is evident in the tendency of guides to re-direct the conversation back to a familiar mini-script).
- Mini-scripts become embedded and resistant to change. They run the risk of becoming stale or outdated. A guide narrating at the sea otter exhibit, for example, explained that the animals were being fed rock cod. She was corrected after the talk by one of the staff who emphasized that they had stopped using rock cod for food a year and a half ago and that there had been a number of updates to share this information.
3. Guides have too few conversations about
conservation issues with guests.
In discussions with the key project team, it was anticipated that certain stations would lend themselves more easily to conservation conversations. These included: the marine mammal cart and the kelp forest. Yet even at these stations, conservation issues were rarely discussed. In the case of the marine mammal carts, guides did occasionally use the sea otter pelt to refer to sea otter hunting, albeit in rather vague terms, such as: “A lot of people used to hunt sea otters because of that fur. Now we don’t have to do that. Now we have PolarTec fleece.” Or, “You can see why they almost became extinct. Years ago people hunted them for Kings and Queens of Europe.” No mention of the Aquarium’s current work in sea otter conservation occurred during the periods of observation.
When asked a specific question about whether or not gray whale hunting still occurred, one guide answered: “I don’t know. Some whales pretty much made a comeback. Different countries allow hunting of different things.” The guide then re-directed the conversation back to a description of baleen whale feeding adaptations.
At all of the stations, guides rarely, if ever, referred to current happenings in the Bay during the observation periods. For example, when a guest looking at the sperm whale tooth on the marine mammal cart asked if sperm whales are ever sighted in the Bay, a guide answered that she didn’t know, and redirected the conversation back to how toothed whales feed. Meanwhile, the “Today on the Bay” poster located just outside on the deck reported a Sperm Whale sighting in the Bay that day. The same guide had attended a shift enrichment on “Marine Mammals in the Bay” that morning.
Similarly, when a guest holding a Seafood Watch card asked a guide at the bat ray cart a specific question about whether the squid fishing currently occurring in the Bay was sustainable, the guide answered that she did not know and redirected the conversation to the feeding adaptations of rays. She did, however, suggest that the guest fill out an inquiry card at the entrance of the Aquarium, and assured her that a resident expert would get back to her with the right answer.
Even in scripted presentations, conservation messages tend to be “tagged onto the end.” Evaluations of other zoo and aquarium presentations reveal the same tendency (Kelsey, 1994). The staff person responsible for the scripts explains that this may be due to the strong science/natural history orientation of existing programs: “I think with many of our programs it has been the natural history story that we wanted to tell that precipitated the program in the first place, then the conservation ‘twist’ was added at the end as an afterthought. The one program where that didn’t happen was our deck show Heroes of Conservation...on that one we simply set out to tell conservation stories, not give natural history or science the top billing. The science information was in there, but only as it was needed to tell the conservation story. I think we could do better if we began the development for each program by focusing on the conservation stories we want to tell, and then adding in the science stories that support it. It’s really just a change in focus for the approach to the program.”
4. Ocean Action Discovery Station and Seafood
Watch card facilitate conservation encounters.
The Ocean Action Discovery Station (OADS cart) offers a clear exception to the preceding findings. At the OADS cart, guides frequently draw real, specific links between what guests might be planning for dinner and fisheries’ practices. The longest conversations observed during this evaluation occurred at the OADS cart. These conversations were more likely to be initiated and perpetuated by guests than encounters at the other stations. A number of guests appeared to be aware of sustainable fisheries issues and were seeking reinforcement for their choices or further guidance: “So if I go into a market or a restaurant, they should be able to tell me if it’s farmed salmon, right?” Guide response: “Hopefully, but often not. If it says Atlantic salmon, it’s farmed. If it says Alaska Salmon, it’s wild caught.”
The use of real food packaging, and the names of specific local restaurants and grocery stores, makes the connections between video images of fisheries practices and consumer behavior direct and tangible.
The Seafood Watch card is the most frequently used conservation tool amongst the guides. A number of guides either hand them out or refer to them at all of the guide stations. There appears to be widespread reliance on the Seafood Watch card as the conservation tool for the Aquarium’s public galleries.
Factors Contributing to the Low Incidence of Conversations about Conservation
Guide identity
Aquarium guides take great pride in their role and in their contributions to the Aquarium and its guests. They are comfortable with their historic identity as interpreters of aquatic science. This identity is strongly reinforced by their initiation through the Guide Training Program, or as several of them put it, “surviving marine biology boot camp!”
The term “conservation,” on the other hand, means many things to different people and depending upon their own, individual conceptions, guides appear more or less enthusiastic about assuming a new identity as an “aquatic conservation interpreter.”
For some conservation=environmentalist. As one guide expressed: “I don’t feel comfortable raising conservation issues. Politically, environmentalists are so unpopular right now. You can see when you’re talking to people, not local people where it’s like preaching to the converted, but with others, you can feel them getting defensive.”
For others, conservation=preaching. “Conservation is too ‘in your face’”, a guide explains. “People are inundated with environmental issues on TV. Cards, carts, the vanishing wildlife exhibit—we can’t be too preachy.”
Still others hold the view that conservation=information dissemination. They believe that knowledge about an animal will lead towards responsible conservation behavior: “Tell them how old an animal must be before they have babies, and let them figure it out” or “Knowledge will change behavior. You don’t need to preach or be heavy handed.”
Some guides perceive that conservation=emotional connection. This seems to be a fairly comfortable identity, as it reflects the type of modeling values for aquatic life activities in which the guides already excel: “By touching an animal, and gaining respect for it, you’re helping people to want to protect it.”
Others associate conservation with scientific expertise: conservation=expert knowledge. This conception is reflected in the following excerpt from a guide enrichment session. According to the enrichment leader: “Gray whale migration has been in the news lately with a report that the population numbers have dropped from 26,000 to 14,000. A lot of researchers and conservationists were panicking. But, the expert in Sausalito explained that the drop was inevitable. It was a move to population equilibrium. The numbers for this year’s census are up from last year. The expert was justified and those who panicked were wrong.” When guides in the audience contributed their own anecdotal experiences of what they’d seen, the enrichment leader ended the discussion by stating: “I haven’t seen any good research on that.”
In contrast, some guides, particularly those working with the OADS cart, conceptualize conservation in terms of complicated, and often controversial issues. They perceive their role in terms of conservation=choices: “The OADS cart has excellent tools. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about options. There isn’t one authority that has all the answers.” And, “We can’t proselytize. Why farmed salmon are bad is counterintuitive. Each thing is so complicated, there are many pressures. The Seafood watch card makes people think. It gives them choices.”
The conservation=complex issues conception also raises concerns for guides who feel nervous about their abilities to grasp so much new and changing information: “Conservation issues are so complicated, I don’t think I’ll ever understand them well enough to talk about them.”
While many guides appear hesitant with respect to their conservation identity, an enthusiastic constituency feels passionately that the Aquarium should be doing much more in terms of supporting conservation interpretation. As one guide put it: “Conservation is the best kept secret at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.” According to their perspective, “there are a number of volunteers who want to do conservation. How can we get the MBA to help us? Too little has been done on integrating the guide program with conservation issues.”
Specific training for conservation interpretation
Many guides recognize conservation as a missing gap in their guide training. Those questioned don’t remember it being covered, and one diligent young woman confessed: “I went through the whole manual—there are only two pages dealing with conservation.”
In addition to wanting more training about conservation issues, a number of guides mentioned the need for training that demonstrates how they can integrate conservation into their work at specific stations: “Take each station and answer the question, how could you get to conservation from here. It needs to be relevant, to be tied to what people are seeing.”
A number of guides volunteered that they have difficulty making transitions into conservation conversations: “I’ve always had trouble getting the conservation message in because people are so interested in the animals,” or “It is hard to switch gears into conservation.” Fitting conservation in, as many guides describe it “doesn’t come as easily as we would like.” It can feel awkward, and therefore, unpleasant, as in the case of this guide: “I have to force myself to do conservation messages. I started with sea otters because they fit most naturally there. But I have to force myself to do them because we believe in it.”
Other guides express frustration that they can’t seem to fit conservation into their guest encounters: “I feel I am full of conservation information and I rarely get a chance to share it.”
Infrastructure for sourcing and sharing conservation information
It appears that most of the current conservation messages that guides receive from the Aquarium come from just a few staff members. This places a lot of onus on individual staff members to both find and disseminate conservation updates. Though this task has been made much easier by the introduction of electronic distribution list to the guides, there is still the sense that too few people are trying to gather too much information, often on top of their already full time jobs.
In addition to work load concerns, the limited number of people involved in information sourcing runs the danger of leading to bias or missed opportunity. As one of the individuals responsible for supplying conservation information to the guides describes, “With all the stuff coming from the Seafood Watch team, it’s easy to find information to send to the OADS cart volunteers. We typically send five updates per week. But when it comes to jellies, conservation e-mails are much more sporadic.”
Conservation issues are so multi-disciplinary and complex, sources of information tend to be widely scattered. The project team may wish to consider a re-conceptualization of the ways in which conservation information is shared within the Guide program. This could include:
- Developing a system that encourages guides themselves to take personal responsibility for gathering and contributing conservation information
- Establishing institutional comfort with multi-sourced conservation information.
It is encouraging to note that guides who were selected as “exemplary” in terms of conservation interpretation by the project team were readily able to list a number of sources that they had used to stay in touch with conservation issues. These included:
- Watching wildlife programs on PBS or the discovery channel
- Sharing stories with other guides on shift
- Reading newspapers, and looking for a hook to get it back to visitors: “I think, how am I going to relate this to a diesel mechanic in Idaho?”
- Attending conservation meetings, such as the Audubon Society
- Going to academic lectures at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and Monterey Peninsula College
- Watching videos supplied by the Aquarium, such as Shape of Life
- Attending enrichments or special evening lectures at the Aquarium
- Shadowing other guides on other shifts to hear what they say
- Relating things they do in other areas of their lives, for example, volunteering at a wildlife rehabilitation center
Institutional culture
The Aquarium enjoys a very strong and consistent institutional culture with respect to aquatic science. The existing guide-training program reflects this culture through its emphasis on scientific classification and the importance of scientific accuracy.
The Aquarium’s identity as a conservation organization is much younger, and therefore, less easily characterized. The institutional comfort level with conservation issues that are highly controversial or political, for instance, is not discussed in guide training nor does it appear to be widely understood within the guide corps.
A few guides drew examples, such as the five-day (10-hour) enrichment on jellies that did not include any conservation information, or the perceived reluctance on the part of MBARI for the Live from Monterey Bay Auditorium Program (“live link”) to include conservation information, as evidence of a lack of institutional commitment to the Aquarium’s mission. In order for the guides to “risk” fully embracing their role as conservation interpreters, they must feel secure that such a role is supported by the institution as a whole.
Institutional history
Very much to its credit, the Aquarium has a corps of volunteers that is even more stable than its staff. These long-term, experienced guides serve an important “gate-keeping” role in inspiring and maintaining a high level of professionalism. Though keenly committed to remaining “cutting edge,” a number of these individuals are of the opinion that the existing system of guide training and guest/guide encounters are working well and need little change. The fact that experienced guides mentor new guides at the stations further reinforces the status quo. Some experienced guides express the concern that: “If we lighten up on the marine biology aspects of the guide training, the new people won’t know anything.”
At the same time, a number of Aquarium staff went through guide training when they began their association with the Aquarium. This also strengthens institutional resistance to risk-taking and change with respect to altering guide training or the adoption of a more clearly defined conservation identity for the guides.
Additionally, the expense and importance of the existing training program makes it further resistant to change. As a staff member explains: “We’ve gotten to the point where we’re nervous about making mistakes. We’re hesitant to change.”
Exhibits and interpretive planning
Decisions made by the Exhibits Division have significant implications for interpretive planning and delivery. Whether or not the guides are at static stations or roving throughout the galleries, the location of stations, the need for touch pool animal supervision, how visitors are oriented, the ability to link static props to observable phenomena on the decks—all of these interpretive decisions require coordination with exhibit planning teams.
There is a sense amongst the guide corps that collaborative planning between the education division and the exhibits division needs enhancement. They are looking to the re-development of the near-shore galleries as an opportunity to demonstrate the value of including guide experience and education division interpretive planning expertise into the exhibit design process.
Broader Implications
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a distinguished history as a “trusted source of information” with respect to marine science. Its identity as a purveyor of marine science authority and expertise fosters a transmission-based learning culture in both the existing guide training program, and the ways in which guides interact with guests in the Aquarium’s galleries. In this transmission-based learning culture, Aquarium “experts” determine and transmit a set of predetermined conservation messages that are to be shared with the visitors via their interactions with guides and exhibits. Information typically travels in a one-way flow from “expert” scientists to “novice” guests. The tendency to think in terms of developing new sets of conservation “mini-scripts” for the guides to use, for example, is in keeping with the predetermined, content-focused nature of transmission-based learning models.
While familiar and widely used, a transmission-based learning culture may not fully address a number of considerations inherent to conservation interpretation. As discussed earlier in this paper, guides (and guests) do not come to the Aquarium as “blank slates.” On the contrary, they hold a range of conceptions and identities with respect to science and conservation (Kellert 1997). They also embrace diverse values and socio-cultural and political beliefs that influence their responsiveness to science and conservation issues. Thus, the interaction of the public with science is rarely, if ever, a narrowly cognitive one based simply on knowledge. Importance is given to the source of the science, and particularly to the extent to which it could be judged trustworthy and reflective of understanding of their situation. Emotion, social relationships and social structures all play a significant part in determining the course of practical action which individuals deemed most appropriate in their particular circumstances (Irwin and Wynne 1996). Public uptake (or not) of scientific knowledge is not based primarily upon intellectual capability (Wynne 1991). Rather, it is influenced by socio-institutional factors having to do with social access, trust and negotiation as opposed to authority. When science is seen as relevant to an individual’s concerns, these individuals demonstrate considerable resourcefulness in locating sources and impressive capability in translating scientific knowledge into forms which support practical action (Jenkins 1998).
Furthermore, as the past decades of conservation initiatives attest, conservation issues are rarely straightforward. Nor are they exclusively confined to problems answered by science. As Johnson et al. (2001) describe: conservation issues “are defined as much by socio-cultural values and political and economic factors as by the biophysical dimension.” Indeed, the complexity of conservation issues is evidenced by the multiple roles that the Aquarium itself adopts (information source, habitat protector, ocean advocate, role model, etc.) with respect to conservation action.
Contemporary educational theory recognizes the importance of discursive learning models that openly encourage and value multiple ideas and perspectives (Larochelle, Bednarz & Garrison 1998; Layton et al. 1993). Such models challenge the belief that facts speak for themselves and, instead, emphasize the active role of the learner and the contextual nature of learning (Dillon, Kelsey and Duque-Aristizabal 1999). Clarifying messages and transmitting the Aquarium’s positions on key conservation issues is one important institutional role. Yet, the goal of engaging guests in true conversations about conservation demands that the Aquarium expand its role as a scientific authority to more fully embrace its identity as a forum and facilitator of a discursive learning culture.
References
Dillon, J., E. Kelsey and A. Duque-Aristizabal. 1999. “Identity and Culture: Theorizing Emergent Environmentalism.” Environmental Education Research 5(4):395–405.
Irwin, A. and B. Wynne (eds.). 1996. Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jenkins, E. 1998. Scientific and Technological Literacy for Citizenship: What Can We Learn from the Research and other Evidence? Paper published on the Leeds University, Education Department website http://www.leedsac.uk/educol/document.
Johnson, M.C. and M. Poulin. 2001. Bringing Science to the Public through Biodiversity Monitoring: Lessons Learned from the Rideau River Biodiversity Project. Paper commissioned by Canadian Biodiversity Office, Environment Canada.
Kellert, S.R. 1997. Biological Diversity and Human Society. Island Press.
Kelsey, E. 1994. An Alternative Paradigm For Conservation Education: Innovations In The Public Presentation Of Killer Whales At The Vancouver Aquarium. Master’s Thesis, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.
Larochelle, M., N. Bednarz and J. Garrison (eds.). 1998. Constructivism and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Layton, D., E. Jenkins, S. Macgill and A. Davey. 1993. Inarticulate Science? Perspectives on the Public Understanding of Science and Some Implications for Science Education. Nafferton: Studies in Education Ltd.
Elin Kelsey, Ph.D., is the principal of Elin Kelsey & Company, The Studio, 123-17th Street, Pacific Grove, CA 93950. She may be reached at elin@iname.com.