Joe Brennan delighted with his presentation on the Steinhart Aquarium, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last Sept. 29, having opened in 1923. It got its name through one man with a dream and passion to have a world-class aquarium in San Francisco. He and his brother Ignats, both from Bavaria, opened a successful dry-goods store in Placerville after the Gold Rush, and ended up with a string of dry-goods stores up and down California. Ignats, who went into banking and investing, dreamed that San Francisco should have an aquarium. The brothers each put up $20,000 to fund an aquarium. But the city demurred, not sure where to put it.
A possible location was argued until 1922, when it finally opened. The architect was Timothy Fluger, renowned for his work on many big Bay Area facades including in Grand Lake and Oakland. By the time he died he had upped his donation to $250,000, with the stipulation that the aquarium be located in Golden Gate Park, funded by the city and managed by the Academy of Sciences.
Joe was hired there for his “golden job” -- like Dianne had in Houston and Kevin had onstage as part of the Chip and Dale Review, he said.
The Steinhart opened as a world-class, world aquarium, equipped to take care of any aquatic animal that anyone brought in. It had six different water systems – 3 salt and 3 fresh – with hot, normal (ambient) and cold salt or fresh water. There were also special systems for dolphins, penguins etc.
The aquarium had “a real zest and brilliance” for exhibiting the animals, plus fun things like archer fish, “a real kick” for grade-school kids. This was a tank of fish that lived in the Amazon, that were very accurate at spitting: these fish could spit a stream of water to adjacent vegetation and zap insects to eat. At Steinhart, they set up a little plywood target above the tank and put crickets on it at 12, 2 and 4 o’clock, and fish would come up for delectable target practice.
One of many things Joe liked was the “womb with a view,” or little egg sacs found on the beach --- “meermaid eggs” -- or eggs of little flatfish, in which aquarium personnel would install tiny windows so you could see the egg developing.
And electric eels: Aquarium workers put a microphone in the water for when one eel annoyed another. You could hear the “Zzzzt!” when the annoyed eel responded. That delighted the kids.
They also had a fish roundabout and a tidepool where visitors could touch anenomes and shellfish.
Some had personalities, Joe said: like the Pacific octopus, the female can be three times larger than the male. The aquarium’s female was nocturnal; daytime visitors could only see a big pulsing lump and an eye peering at them. One day a staffer reported to Joe that the tank holding Dungeness crabs was missing a crab for the second day in a row. An employee from the Philippines and staff suspected noodles and crab were being cooked (everyone laughed knowingly) until someone found that the Pacific octopus was three tanks over, and shells were found on the floor of her tank. This octopus, Joe said, was able to lift the lid of her tank, squeeze out, slither along the intervening two tanks and grab a Dungeness crab for a midnight snack. “It was magnificent,” he said. So staff set up a camera to catch the thief in the act: Since the octothief could be in the air for about 40 minutes, she could get away with it. Staff glued astroturf between the water and the tank where the lid was, so she couldn’t get suction to help her plunder. “That was our octopus story.”
Joe told of the alligator swamp, where lived an albino alligator named Claude. An employee named Tommy Green donned boots to go into the swamp daily to feed chicken to the inhabitants (Joe said they didn’t bite Tommy because they liked chicken better) but one day Tommy he heard a scream of “Tommy Green, you get out of there this minute!” from his mother – the first time she’d seen what he did at work.
Joe dedicated the talk to his boss, John McCosker the aquarium director, and described the swamp and its lush tropical vegetation. Wanting to add birds, they brought in a showy white cockatiel which was fed to delight the public. Plans to introduce birds into the swamp were announced to the press, who gathered with cameras ready --- until the cockatiel flew down toward the swamp and an alligator rose up and gave one chomp. All that remained was one white feather. “When publicity goes bad, it really goes bad,” Joe sighed mournfully.
The head of security at Steinhart, Lavelle Alderson, was introduced, and Joe spoke of her staff and their “interesting chore:” The alligator swamp had triangular-shape cast seahorses on the upright rails. Kids loved to look at them but got their heads stuck in the rails and had to be released with help from Vaseline which got in their ears. When their Moms told the kids to wash the Vaseline out of their ears, the kids could only say, “Huh?” That got a laugh.
At Steinhart they’d done pioneering work on different species, Joe said, including coral and penguins. The aquarium took on the project of artificially raising coral in a 100-gallon tank. Coral needs lots of strong sunlight as it eats by photosynthesis, so Steinhart had three 1,000-watt light fixtures, like those used at Candlestick Park, making the scene very bright. McCosker had an ichthyologist friend interested in propagating coral artificially – who was the emperor of Japan, making security an issue. They sent the Secret Service to survey the area, but the emperor never did visit.
When Joe took on the job of Chief Engineer, he had to be certified as a diver, which he thought would be handy at Steinhart. He had to go to the ocean on a collecting tour. But first the boat’s ignition key, then its motor, then the steering, all had trouble and had to be fixed. He also at one point had to go to Hawaii to collect coral, and successfully got lots of black volcanic rock, but discovered that they had also bought back some life forms and new species hidden in the rock – but ended up with a completely balanced ecosystem.
Then he discussed the penguin project, which involved successfully setting up a habitat for “adorable” penguins. With funding from the World Wildlife Fund, he helped collect, in South Africa, some “jackass” penguins, so named for their color and their bray-like cry. Since a major oil spill such as the one from the Exxon Valdez could wipe them out, a vigorous number of penguins had to be collected in captivity; so Joe became part of collecting a dozen penguins and settling them into incubators that looked like an old Ferris wheel with rows of seats. That simulated the natural jiggles of the nest environment. They also bought in a helpful “penguin machine” that maintains the temperatures of natural life. That brought a very vigorous number of penguins, to have on hand in case the ones in captivity were wiped out and penguins in nature became extinct.
In Hawaii, dogs, cats, rats and humans made the penguins easy pickings. But from a small population of penguins in an Ohio zoo, they were able to repopulate Hawaii – both the big island and Maui.
Flash forward, to when Joe left the Academy and was at a tech museum in San Jose. By that time they had a little pen and wading pool on the roof, with 20-25 surplus penguins looking for homes. Someone told him of an offer to house them in Las Vegas – Joe dryly thought, “Going over to the Dark Side? What the hell?!” but was reassured that the Nevada Fish and Game was part of the plan. A local casino had hired some agriculturists, so he said okay and headed that way. A few years later he was booked into a security conference in Las Vegas; en route to the conference hall he went through the yard of the Flamingo Hotel – and here was a lush garden with ponds and a pink flamingo, and on the beach beyond, jackass penguins! Joe told the Rotarians that he yelped “It’s me! Father Joe! It was such an emotional moment!” That summed up his “unnatural relationship with jackass penguins!”
Fast forward a decade to Part II of his story: Joe’s niece Louise was going to get married and he was asked to solemnize the wedding, in Malibu Canyon in a venue with a lawn and big oak trees. But when there, upon spotting a dog carrier out of which walked two jackass penguins, Joe thought, “Holy cow!” He forgot the wedding to go talk to the owners who had secured the pair in Las Vegas, set free because they were no longer a breeding pair. Since penguins mate for life, the plan was to have Joe at the altar with one penguin and have the other at the back, and both penguins had the wedding rings looped around their necks. At a signal, the penguin in back would walk up to join Joe (bringing a chorus of oohs and aahhs from the Rotarians.) At the reception, guests came up to Joe to exclaim how cute it was to see the two penguins walk up the aisle together --- proof that “eyewitnesses don’t all see the same thing and we do have enhanced memories,” Joe said.
Part III: Back to the aquarium when they had 17 penguins. That meant there was an odd man out, Joe said: a “rasty little character” named Oreo. This was 1991, the “year of Tibet” since George H.W. Bush had focused on the reunification of Tibetan families. As part of that celebration the Asian Art Museum had arranged a show of Tibetan art called “Wisdom and Compassion”, and the Steinhart Aquarium hung a show called “My Tibet” with photos by famous mountaineering photographer Galen Rowell paired with words by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and photos of wildlife and wild scenes. It was a double-header: the Dalai Lama himself was to open both the show and the “Wisdom and Compassion” across the street. He came to us first, Joe said, because he had led some treks in Nepal and visited Tibet. The spiritual leader got introduced to the head of the Aquarium board.
Joe said: We’d heard that the Dalai Lama liked birds. So here we are at the Steinhart Aquarium; we overlooked every species of reptile and fish and amphibian we had, and we went to the birds and overlooked all of them except little Oreo. We were going to put Oreo out so the Dalai Lama could see a penguin. We made a little crib of Plexiglass and kitty litter on the bottom to keep their wretched stink down because they liked fish, and I opened the door and asked His Holiness in, and he looks over and he sees the penguin and he looks at it, and I’m thinking, “Mission accomplished! I’ve shown the Dalai Lama a penguin!” But no. He starts bending down, and picks it up to see how heavy it is, and I’m thinking to myself, Does he know that’s Oreo? (laughter filled the room). It crosses my mind – the headline in tomorrow’s Chronicle – “Penguin draws Dalai Lama’s blood!”
Adam said he’d been in the business for 20 years, having started in 2004, and is the owner of Coastside Insurance agencies. Hopefully someday you’ll see something like “Kevin and son,” Kevin laughed.
Both of them, primarily Adam, talked. In 20 years this is the hardest insurance market he’d ever seen due mostly to the wildfires and losses in California. He first started seeing carriers take action on policies about 10 years ago, mostly with homes in very exposed rural areas. Homeowners were skeptical about wildfires in their areas, which makes insurance a “hard sell,” but now people are seeing the losses.
Over the last five years, those non-renewals and company actions have dramatically accelerated, and gone from rural and mountain areas into downtown Half Moon Bay. So the insurance companies are serious about trying to limit their exposure, which is impacting people “all over” the state. Right now, he said, many preferred carriers aren’t writing any new business in the property market for homes. He said you’ve heard about State Farm, Allstate’s not writing any new business. The majority of his preferred carriers – quite a few – are not offering any new business at all. If you called him up today and said, Hey, quote my auto, my home, my umbrella, he would say, Yeah, I can, but I’m not going to be able to find one company to put that with; I’d have to package it all together. So it’s brutal; it’s tough. It’s very challenging for us as agents, for the consumer, especially if they find themselves needing to buy insurance.
PUMPKIN FESTIVAL 2023 - ROTARY CLUB CLAM CHOWDER BOOTH
Joe truly exemplifies the Rotary motto of Service Above Self in everything he does. We at the Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay are honored to have Joe as our valued member. Joe Brennan is most deserving to be recognized as District 5150’s Rotarian of the Month for September 2023!
Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
United States of America