Barrett Christie: Building An Oasis for Endangered Desert Fishes
Barrett Christie, Director of Husbandry at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, CT, has worked with most major groups of aquatic animals, from seals to sharks to corals- but ironically- he has a strong passion for the desert…Desert fishes, that is. Join us as Barrett explains why-- AND why some of these fishes are in trouble.
BIO:
Barrett Christie graduated from Texas A&M University at Galveston with a degree in Marine Biology in 2004 and began his career working for the Aquarium at Moody Gardens. He later went on to oversee the renovation and expansion of one of the oldest public aquaria in the US, the Dallas Aquarium at Fair Park which originally opened in 1936. After 10 years in Dallas, he was recruited to build a massive new aquarium from the ground up and became the first Curator of Fishes at OdySea Aquarium in Scottsdale, Arizona which opened in 2016. Recently he took on the role of Director of Animal Husbandry for the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Barrett has worked with most major taxa of aquatic life from seals to sharks to corals and everything in between, but his main interests are in fish parasitology, coral reproduction, and imperiled desert fishes. Coral conservation is also a major passion of his, and he has worked with Project SECORE restoring reefs in Puerto Rico and on the Riviera Maya in México. He has published on topics as varied as parasites, freshwater mussels, shark behavior, octopus care, and the husbandry of walking batfishes. In 2014 a project he and a colleague worked on went viral highlighting how they raised jellyfish on peanut butter, effectively creating the world’s first peanut butter and jellyfish.
When not working, he enjoys spending time backpacking in the western deserts, cave diving in Florida, and fly fishing the myriad of New England streams that trickle through the woods surrounding his home.