VANCOUVER — The man who has led the Vancouver Aquarium for the last 25 years and helped create its ocean conservation organization, Ocean Wise, has announced his retirement.
A news release from Ocean Wise says aquarium president and CEO John Nightingale will step down at the end of the year.
Nightingale came to Vancouver in 1993, leaving a senior post at the New York Aquarium to take over from the Vancouver Aquarium's founding director, Murray Newman.
Since then, the release says Nightingale has helped the aquarium refine its mission, increase attendance and greatly expand its science, conservation and public programs.
It says his work culminated last year with the launch of Ocean Wise, the global conservation organization he heads as CEO.
Nightingale also initiated or co-founded projects such as the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup and the Ocean Wise Sustainable Seafood Program, which partners with restaurants, retailers and others to help consumers make sustainable seafood choices.
Nightingale says his time at the aquarium was a remarkable adventure and he has been privileged to work with leading scientists and conservationists.
"I've been very fortunate to have a career doing work close to my heart: ocean conservation, raising public awareness, supporting leading science, and making use of that science to effect change during an era when our blue planet needed it most," he says in the release.
He says he believes that the need is growing for organizations like the aquarium and Ocean Wise.
"We teach current and future generations about the life in our oceans with the hope they feel inspired to protect it. In this digital age, that connection to nature is needed like never before."
Nightingale's final years in Vancouver have been marked by a growing controversy over the captivity of whales and other cetaceans and the aquarium announced earlier this year that it would no longer display cetaceans at its facility.
Ocean Wise says an international search to find its next CEO has already begun.
