Head of New Long Beach Aquarium Is Diving Into a Challenging Task

The plastic duck’s feet glued to the ceiling of Warren Iliff’s office give an inkling that the president and CEO of the soon-to-open Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific is no ordinary executive.

But if the feet are not convincing, there are the stuffed penguins tottering on the windowsill, the rice paper fish perched on a pedestal and the ancient diving suit crumpled on the floor.

Every shelf, ledge and corner of Iliff’s office is filled with animal toys, drawings, sculptures and memorabilia accumulated while working at four zoos in the United States.

Then there is Iliff’s collection of 70 airsickness bags from different airlines--proof of his offbeat nature that has brought him a string of fans who work with him.

“He thinks way out of the box,” said Jim Hancock, the aquarium’s vice president of marketing.

“There is nobody quirkier,” admitted Elise Burnham, Iliff’s secretary. “He is full of energy and hard to keep up with.”

Iliff, 61, is famous for his energy, something he will need in launching an attraction that city officials hope will draw millions of tourists to Long Beach.

“I know people who wanted to slip him Prozac to slow him down when he was here,” said Jeff Williamson, executive director of the Phoenix Zoo.

Part of that energy is due to the eight to 10 cups of coffee he drinks every day.

But an extra caffeine boost doesn’t hurt for those 12-hour days filled with back-to-back meetings. If Iliff isn’t in a meeting, he’s on the phone or taking people on a tour of the $117-million aquarium, which is 97% complete.

Even on weekends, he brainstorms. On Mondays, a river of memos flows from his office about what needs to be done before the aquarium’s grand opening June 20.

Perched next to a man-made harbor surrounded by newly planted palm trees, the aquarium is the centerpiece of the Queensway Bay project, a retail and entertainment center aimed at establishing Long Beach as one of the most compelling waterfronts in Southern California.

The aquarium will be the fourth-largest in the United States, Iliff said, behind the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Inside, construction workers are busy putting finishing touches on the structure, which will house 10,000 representatives from 550 species found in three Pacific Ocean areas: Micronesia, Baja and Southern California, and the waters between Russia and Japan.

In shaping the aquarium’s programs, Iliff’s goal is to raise public awareness of environmental threats to the ocean.

“We want to orient the community to how lucky we are to have this body of water and that we need to take care of it,” he said.

On a recent afternoon, Iliff, wearing a navy blue tie imprinted with fish images, gave a tour of the aquarium, which was filled with the cacophony of buzz saws and hammers and the smell of cement and glue.

Stepping into the Great Hall of the Pacific, he pointed to the ceiling, where an 88-foot-long, fiberglass replica of a blue whale will be hung.

“There are only three other models in the world,” he said proudly. They are in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, New York’s American Museum of Natural History and London’s Natural History Museum.

Continuing through the building, Iliff pointed out the hands-on labs for school tours, the three-story Great Predator tank and the Seals and Sea Lions exhibit.

The building is the size of three football fields and will have 17 major habitats and 30 smaller exhibits, from the temperate Sea of Cortez to the ice-cold waters of Russia and northern Japan.

The aquarium isn’t even open yet, but already Iliff is talking about expanding the building to add exhibits on the Galapagos Islands and Antarctica.

Creativity and an unending stream of ideas that change from day to day are his trademarks, along with a laugh that can be heard a mile away.

Harry Papp, president of the Phoenix Zoo board of directors, likes to tell the story about replacing a female jaguar who had died.

At a Thursday finance meeting, Iliff said the jaguar exhibit would be replaced by tree kangaroos. At the Friday executive committee meeting, he said ocelots would be the replacement. But by Tuesday’s board meeting, he explained that the jaguar would be replaced by a Cape clawless otter. The otter won out.

Iliff’s secret of success is not only energy and creativity, but his love for animals--even for Charlie the chimp, an inhabitant of Portland’s Washington Park Zoo, who bit off Iliff’s right middle finger.

Animals, however, were not in Iliff’s initial career plan. He grew up in Pittsburgh and attended Harvard on a U.S. Navy scholarship, starting out with plans to become a patent attorney and ending up majoring in government.

After a stint in the Marine Corps, Iliff worked five years as a helicopter pilot dusting banana crops in Honduras and cotton in Guatemala.

In Honduras he developed a fascination with jungle animals, creating his own private backyard zoo--howler monkeys, spider monkeys, a coatimundi, a boa constrictor, yellow-throated parrots and a toucan.

Returning to Washington, he got a job with the Air Transport Assn. and began volunteering at the National Zoo.

A year later, he was working as the zoo director’s special assistant. After eight years there, he moved on to Portland, where he remained nine years. He later headed the Dallas Zoo for seven years and the Phoenix Zoo for nearly five.

Since arriving in Long Beach two years ago, he has overseen every detail in putting together this aquatic collection. Now his challenge is making sure the aquarium is a success and all the animals are in place for opening day.