Birch Aquarium

This guide to Birch Aquarium in San Diego centers on a hushed crowd gathered around one tank in 2023, watching a weedy seadragon that was visibly pregnant, and male. It walks through the odd courtship dance that ends with the female pressing her eggs onto the male's tail, and introduces Leslee Matsushige, who has run the aquarium's seahorse and seadragon breeding program since 1996 and had chased this exact moment for decades. You'll hear how rare captive breeding of this species is worldwide, and what an earlier, much smaller attempt here had produced three years before. Stand at the seadragon tank and look for the male carrying the season's brood.