831>>TALES FROM THE AREA CODE

Nobody likes a quitter. Monterey Bay Aquarium Senior Aquarist Chad Widmer and his team are no exception to the rule, though their methods of dealing with quitters rings a little more militant than those of the neighborhood Little League coach.

“We chop ‘em up and feed them to the other jellies,” says Widmer from above one of the largest jelly tanks in the world. He’s cradling the melon-sized, yolk-like orange bell of a Pacific nettle medusa in his hand, oblivious to the burn its thin tentacles bring.

“Quitters” are what Widmer and company call dead jellyfish (or dead jellies—the more aquatically correct term). Dealing with their corpses is just one tentacle on the big jelly of the job the so-called “drifters team” takes on every day. Their charge includes everything from watching the jellies for signs of stress (like slowed pulsing or floating feeding arms) to determining what specific salinity they need to best breed—in sum, a wealth of specialized tasks that ultimately produce the stunning Outer Bay jellies exhibit (and an ocean of new knowledge about jellies).

One of their greatest accomplishments has been mastering the tricky task of spawning and growing different jellies native to the Monterey Bay. It’s tricky business because they are difficult enough just to keep alive—for instance, should they scrape too much on the tank glass, their two-cell-thick dome shreds. And they’re finicky little floaters—each species requires specific movie star-style treatment: salinity, temperature, pressure, light, oxygen levels, and more all have to be just right. (Even so, compared to the other option—running around the bay catching fresh jellies, and accepting the damage caused by bringing them in—it’s much more practical.)

Which all means Widmer knows little quit himself. “When I start to try to culture one, I know I’m going to fail a hundred times. But I continue to beat my head against the wall. It starts to bleed, I put on a helmet, pull off a little advance and get a half step further.”

In the labryrinth of labs behind the scenes at the Aquarium, Widmer offers an example of sorts. He’s feeding krill to a praya, a member of the jelly family that resembles a floating foot-long constellation of miniature blue-and-white Christmas lights—and carries a sting that rivals a Portuguese Man O’ War.

“I tried to hand [the krill] to him with forceps, and he would drop it later,” he says. “Then I wiggled it and—same thing. When I rain it down above him, he’ll take them and eat.”

When Widmer does figure out all the many variables, as he did in becoming the first person anywhere to successfully culture and maintain “crossjellies”—transparent little lookers that have since joined nine other species on display in the permanent Outer Bay jelly exhibit—his teammates know.

“I do a little dance, give a yahoo,” he says. “It’s kind of a jig. I shake my butt.”

But the most rewarding part, he says, comes later.

“You go from catching the jellies to bringing them to the tank,” he says, “to starting the culture to growing the jellies to maturity...then you see a family come and the kids run, point and yell, ‘Jellies!’”

Aquarium spokesman Ken Peterson knows what Widmer is talking about. He says the exhibit is “the most popular special exhibit the Aquarium’s ever had.”

Visitors aren’t the only ones who are pleased with Widmer’s work. He’s had enough success at jelly husbandry that Aquarium leadership tapped him to explore the possibility of putting delicate deep-sea jellies and bobsled-sized Humboldt squid on exhibit.

As a result, while the seven-year Aquarium veteran still spends his mornings perpetuating a proud jelly tradition that first began with the arrival of moon jellies in 1985, his afternoons are all research and development. He says the fact that he spends his afternoons experimenting with new intriguing invertebrates is partly the work of a famous former resident of the Aquarium.

“After the success of the white shark project,” he says, “a lot of the higher-ups wanted to see what new and different things we could bring in to see what’s displayable and what’s not.”

“[Aquarium leadership] likes to keep 20 irons in the fire and invest the research and money in all of them with the hopes that one or two will make it to be an exhibit.”

It makes for a uniquely exciting challenge, says Widmer.

“I’m terrified and I’m extremely stoked,” he says. “I mean, I get to have a $12,000 day using the ROV to look for these deep-sea jellies...but what if I can’t complete the life cycle? Will they give me another project? For that reason I try to design the project so I’m making scientific progress even if we get no displayable animals.

“I’m a biologist living in a exhibit-driven world. It’s part science and part art.”

While engaged by his new projects, Widmer acknowledges an abiding loyalty to what got him there—a refusal to quit on his first marine romance.

“Jellies have been good to me,” he says. “They’ve given me a lot to do.”