On Friday 11 December we celebrated the career, the birthday and the retirement of Dr Patrick Garratt – our outgoing CEO – who has been with the Two Oceans Aquarium since before day one. Dr Pat’s role as CEO will be filled by Michael Farquhar, who was Curator, and Michael’s position will in turn be taken on by Maryke Musson.
All three leaders have in their own time and their own way described their work as the “best job in the world”.
Adventures of a marine biologist
As part of the Aquarium’s founding team – Dr Pat was our Curator before becoming CEO in 2003 – Dr Pat’s impact has been profound, not only a professional level but also on a personal one. It’s no secret that the staff members here think of each other as family, and that’s in large part thanks to Dr Pat’s own approach to team work.
“I have the most incredible team,” says Dr Pat. “And working with these people has been unbelievable. Within this team are such different people with such different minds. When you hear people talking about diversity in companies, I’ve often wondered what are they referring to? Why is diversity so important? It was only when I came into this position that I realized why it is so necessary.
“It’s different minds thinking along different trajectories, and if they come together for a common mission, they come together in a spectacular fashion. I often use the word crazy [Dr Pat’s autobiography is called Crazy: Adventures of a Marine Biologist] but there are crazy people here, right off the wall! At the end of the day, if you give people space to give their views and comments, you receive the most incredible answers.
“Being their leader is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. If you attract the right people to your company, and give them everything that is necessary, you can then just sit back and ride the wave. And that’s what I’ve been doing for years.”
Dr Pat’s Aquarium exploits include numerous adventures and a fair share of world firsts. He is particularly proud of the fact that the Aquarium was the first – and last – facility to successfully display live snoek, albeit for not very long. The expertise and knowledge gathered during those challenging times served to put the Two Oceans Aquarium on the global map. Travelling to Kuwait across the African continent with three ragged-tooth sharks and no flight plan is another special memory.
Of course, his career has not been limited to Cape Town’s aquarium. He was a commercial fisherman, a researcher at the Oceanographic Research Institute in Durban and Curator of Sea World in Durban before making the move to the Mother City. He has spent many years building relationships across the globe and networking with aquarium professionals, and he reckons Japan is the nation to watch in terms of expert animal husbandry and aquarium science. Much of his networking culminated in the Two Oceans Aquarium hosting the hugely successful 8th International Aquarium Congress in Cape Town in 2012.
Dr Pat’s twenty years’ of contributions to the field – which include but are not limited to the tagging of sunfish and ragged-tooth sharks – are best experienced through reading his absorbing autobiography, which is available at the Aquarium’s gift shop.
From all of us at the Two Oceans Aquarium, permanent staff and volunteers, words can not express the hole that will be left when Dr Pat takes his leave to spend his days SUPping in Muizenberg. We hope that he keeps riding his wave, and that we’ll see him out there on the water!
As Dr Pat says, when he returns to visit the Aquarium, “I will do so as a friend.”
New CEO: Michael Farquhar
Dr Pat’s boots will be filled by Michael Farquhar who, until Friday, was the Two Oceans Aquarium Curator. Michael started at the Two Oceans Aquarium as a volunteer with no intentions of working for the organisation. However, in 1997, he was offered a position as the aquarist in charge of the Ocean Basket Kelp Forest Exhibit, the Penguin Exhibit and of water quality, and hasn't looked back.
“It was the best move I could ever have made!” he says. Shortly after his appointment, he became the Aquarium’s Operations Manager and in 2003 he was appointed as the Curator of the Aquarium.
Some of his more memorable experiences include fishing for sharks off beaches in the Eastern Cape, collecting a big musselcracker in Mossel Bay, fishing for “brood stock” kob at Port St Johns and delivering three large ragged-tooth sharks with Dr Pat to an aquarium in Kuwait.
“I am delighted and honoured to be given the opportunity to lead an incredible team which runs a world-class aquarium. Dr Garratt is leaving behind an increasingly respected institution that is running effectively and efficiently, and which is on the brink of a significant expansion when our new large exhibit opens in early 2016.
“It is with thanks to all the staff, Dr Pat, and our board that I take over the reins of this fantastic facility and look to a future brimming with opportunities in visitor experience, marine education, conservation and research. There are exciting times ahead.”
New curator: Maryke Musson
Maryke Musson might be the new Curator of the Two Oceans Aquarium, but, like Michael, she’s not new to the Aquarium either. In fact, Maryke was part of the original volunteering team that set up and collected animals for our very first exhibits back in 1995.
Maryke swam her way into the founding Two Oceans Aquarium Curatorial team as a volunteer while studying marine biology at UCT. In between she also helped out at SANCCOB and stayed involved with everything sea-related.
Recalling the period before the opening of the Two Oceans Aquarium, Maryke says: “It was unbelievably exciting, because we were doing things that I never thought I would do … We were fishing, diving, and of course cleaning exhibits and all of that. It was such an honour to be part of the building of the Aquarium and it was crazy. We had a very small budget, barely a timeline that we could work with, but we just did it.”
To her, her new role is a natural progression and she has big – and small - plans to maintain the Aquarium’s status as a world-class facility.
“I love the word ‘curator’ because it comes from the Latin curare, which means to ‘take care’, so that is really my role. To take care of what I call our ‘biological assets’. To me, that’s not just the fish, but also the staff - they are incredibly valuable so it’s almost more important to take care of the staff to ensure the animals are well looked after.
“Our exhibits have to tell stories that are going to inspire people to care for the environment, to think a little bit further and to change their lifestyles. They must walk away amazed.”
With these new and enthused leaders at the helm, the Aquarium is sure to grow in stature within the local community and will continue to expand its influence and reach within the international industry. It is with great excitement that we enter this new era.
