The Aquarium on the Old Hovden Cannery

The Monterey Bay Aquarium stands on the bones of a sardine cannery. In nineteen sixteen a Norwegian immigrant named Knut Hovden opened his cannery here at the north end of the Row. Trained in Norway's fishing industry, Hovden was a tireless inventor.

He devised an underwater hopper that sucked sardines straight from the boats into his plant, and his neighbors called him the King of Cannery Row. His was the last cannery standing, canning squid after the sardines disappeared, until it finally closed in nineteen seventy three. For years the empty building rotted by the water.

Then four scientists, several of them from nearby Hopkins Marine Station, dreamed of turning it into a window on the bay. They won the backing of David Packard, the electronics magnate, whose daughter Julie joined the planning effort, and who with his wife Lucile ultimately gave some fifty five million dollars to build it. The aquarium opened on the twentieth of October, nineteen eighty four.

Its centerpiece was a towering kelp forest tank nearly three stories tall, the first living kelp forest ever displayed in any aquarium on earth. Julie Packard, David's daughter, led the institution for more than four decades.