In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a video of Shedd Aquarium penguins waddling through a beluga whale exhibit spread across the internet — a welcome reprieve from the barrage of bad news. Like many businesses, aquariums across the continent temporarily shut their doors to visitors in the spring of 2020 as the pandemic started to take hold.
While these closures allowed for fun penguin field trips to watch from the safety of our homes, aquarium employees were putting in serious work behind the scenes to revamp everything from visitor flow through their buildings to summer camp programming.
Their challenge: continue to meet the aquariums' education and conservation missions while keeping visitors safe.