National Aquarium Mourns the Passing of Influential Long-Time General Curator Jack Cover

With profound sorrow, the leadership, staff and Board of Directors of the National Aquarium are marking the passing of recently retired General Curator Jack Cover. Throughout his 37-year career at the Aquarium, Jack's keen scientific mind and steady, gentle demeanor helped to shape the Aquarium's mission and trajectory while inspiring virtually every major exhibit space conceived throughout his tenure.

For decades, Jack was a driving force behind the Aquarium's evolution from an Inner Harbor attraction to a hands-on conservation organization active throughout his beloved Chesapeake Bay region while also serving as an inspiration and mentor to generations of colleagues and peers both here in Baltimore and throughout the Aquarium's professional community. In August 2024, he oversaw the installation and debut of the National Aquarium Harbor Wetland®.

Over 37 years, Cover's scientific insight and steady presence shaped the Aquarium's mission and its most iconic exhibits, Harbor Wetland, the standard-bearing, free, outdoor, recreated wetland habitat that, in many ways, became the culmination of his life's work of sharing the wonders of Chesapeake Bay ecosystems with Aquarium visitors. At the time of his passing on Wednesday, January 7, after a brief illness, Jack was 69 years old and had been retired from his official role at the Aquarium for just over a year.

"There is no National Aquarium as we know it today without Jack Cover," said interim President and CEO Jennifer Driban. "His dedication to the animals in our care, to our mission and to conservation of the Chesapeake Bay watershed were unparalleled. Every guest who passes through our doors is enjoying and learning from an experience that Jack helped to envision."

Born and raised in Baltimore's Hampden neighborhood with his parents and three siblings, Jack's career trajectory was all but set in stone by the very early age of six or seven, when he encountered his first reptile, a ringneck snake. Instantly inspired, he poured himself into books on snakes, lizards and amphibians from the Enoch Pratt Library, and struck out to explore wildlife throughout the city, exploring Wyman Park, Stony Run and the Jones Falls, setting the tone for a lifelong passion for animals and highlighting nature in urban areas.

Jack was a graduate of Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, where he joined the Herpetology Club and met like-minded students, some of whom became lifelong friends. Then, at Towson University, he was deeply impacted by his studies under herpetology and behavioral ecology professor Dr. Don Forester. While finishing his biology and herpetology degree at Towson before graduating in 1978, he began work in a lab where he was tasked with extracting venom from a variety of animals, from king cobras to scorpions and black widow spiders.

Aware that the dangers inherent to the job posed risks to his longevity, he looked to the world of zoos and aquariums as the next step forward in his professional life, a move that would prove fortuitous when, after four years as a reptile keeper at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas, an opportunity to consult on a young National Aquarium's new Hidden Life exhibits drew his attention back to Baltimore. Soon after in 1987, he was officially hired as a full-time herpetologist in the Aquarium's Upland Tropical Rain Forest, solidifying a relationship that would define Jack's career trajectory and shape the National Aquarium as it exists today. In Jack's own words: "Getting back to family and getting back to the Chesapeake Bay was the biggest motivation for leaving Texas, but I also really liked that the Aquarium was willing to invest resources in making cutting-edge exhibits. Hidden Life set the bar for high-quality habitat exhibits, and that's what I wanted to do."

Jack's work at the National Aquarium took him around the world, from Suriname to study nearly extinct poison dart frogs, to Australia where he partnered with local biologists and government officials to study and import the largest collection of Northern Australia wildlife outside of that continent for the design and opening of the Aquarium's Australia pavilion in 2005. Thanks to his encyclopedic animal knowledge and his calm, self-effacing charm, Jack also found himself in demand as the National Aquarium's nationally recognized wildlife spokesperson, appearing repeatedly on dozens of local and regional television broadcasts, and, repeatedly, on The David Letterman Show with a variety of exotic animal friends.

According to colleague Charmaine Dahlenburg, the Aquarium's director of field conservation who worked closely with Jack on dozens of projects, including more than a decade at work on the technology that would eventually become Harbor Wetland, it was Jack's hands-on knowledge of the habitats and species of the Chesapeake Bay, born of a lifetime of natural curiosity and exploration, that made Jack more than a scientist. "The one thing that sticks out to me most about Jack (was) his informal knowledge, particularly of the Chesapeake Bay. People can read and study, but he just (knew). He (had) years of wisdom and experience from spending his whole life watching, observing and learning."

Jack's innate curiosity, specifically his knowledge of and affection for the Chesapeake Bay, made him a natural conservationist. He treasured our region's aquatic spaces and lived a life that reflected his respect for ecology and environmentalism. Coworkers and neighbors around the Inner Harbor will miss seeing Jack moving carts loaded with buckets of discarded oyster shells from nearby restaurants across Pratt Street by hand to populate the oyster beds that provide critical small-species habitat all along Harbor Wetland. The compost into which each and every plant within the wetland was planted came from Jack's personal—and massive—compost heap at his Harford County home.

Jack is survived by his wife of 42 years, Carole, and their son, Zak, a professional pianist who, from his father, learned that if you have a true passion and you allow it to guide you, you will find success. Within the National Aquarium and the zoo and aquarium community, Jack inspired hundreds of like-minded professionals through his astounding knowledge of and care for the species he studied and the unique habitats they rely upon to thrive. While not an educator in the traditional sense, Jack's career stands as a testament to the passing of knowledge and science to successive generations by creating living, breathing examples for them to experience and explore. His colleagues and the National Aquarium as a whole are profoundly changed and bettered not only for his professional excellence, but by his selfless generosity, kindness and patience.

Aquarium staff and leadership are grateful for the outpouring of support from our communities. A conservation fund is being established in commemoration of Jack's life and work with the Natural History Society of Maryland.