As proud home to our beloved Aquarium and iconic three rivers, we know about the importance of water. The Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium participates in several initiatives that protect the major oceans of our planet, such as coral conservation and seafood watch.

Coral Conservation

Coral only exists in about two percent of the world’s aquatic habitats, but it is home to over 25 percent of all aquatic life. Alarmingly, they are disappearing very quickly, and some scientists predict that all coral could disappear in as soon as 50 years.

The Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium is actively involved in coral conservation efforts both here at the Zoo and around the world. Every year our aquarists visit waters around the world and occasionally bring coral back home to the Zoo to be studied.

This work has helped our veterinary and aquarist team make huge strides in finding cures for certain ailments in corals.

Project SECORE, standing for SExual COral REproduction, is a one-of-a-kind initiative to help protect, restore, and conserve the world’s coral reefs. It is the only project of its kind and combines some of the world’s leading coral reef researchers with leading public aquarium professionals that are experts in coral care. This combination has turned out to be a winning scenario.

Project SECORE has established a field station at the Curacao Sea Aquarium for its Acropora Reef restoration project. This collaborative effort among members represents a major step for the organization’s restoration and conservation goals. Here, in a nursery, tanks house larvae which will be come future coral colonies to be outplanted back onto the wild reef.

Completing research each year generates a greater understanding of and how to best complete this important work. Each year the SECORE team learns and adjusts their methods to efficiently maximize efforts. The more minds that are working toward this common goal, the greater the opportunity for successful restoration of the reefs will be. The methods developed have the potential to restore reefs at other locations around the globe.

Seafood Watch

The Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium partners with the Monterey Bay Aquarium to educate visitors about the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems. Through the use of a wallet-sized card, visitors determine which seafood choices are best, which require caution, and which should be avoided. We encourage visitors to make the best choices – ones that are well managed or caught and farmed in environmentally friendly ways.

The Water’s Edge exhibit contains the Sound Seafood building where visitors can view a seafood counter and directly note the differences between good and poor choices in regard to fish populations’ health, the ocean’s health, and human health. Visitors can bring a Seafood Watch card with them to actual seafood markets or restaurants to help them make healthy choices for the fish populations and for themselves.

The Zoo also partners with local restaurants and seafood retailers to get them to offer alternatives to seafood that is being overfished or is dangerous for human consumption.