Orange County educator to lead Birch Aquarium

Harry Helling, a respected educator who ran and greatly expanded the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, has been named executive director of UC San Diego’s Birch Aquarium

Helling, 58, will succeed Nigella Hillgarth, who stepped down in May 2014 to become president and chief executive of Boston’s New England Aquarium.

Birch Aquarium, which highlights the research of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has had two interim directors -- Steven Schindler and Deborah Zmarzly -- since Hillgarth left.

Helling earned a bachelor’s degree at UC San Diego in 1980, where he focused on cultural anthropology and marine biology. He worked at Scripps’ Vaughn Aquarium-Museum, the forerunner of Birch Aquarium. During that time, he attended a lecture by a visiting government official that changed his life.

“The message was: If you don’t learn to translate your science for the public you risk losing your research funding forever,” said Helling, who is widely known for his ability to talk about the ocean.

In 1985, Helling joined the Orange County Marine Institute, a small facility in Dana Point Harbor. Initially, he ran an education program on the institute’s Tall Ship, Pilgrim. He soon became director of education and introduced innovative programming that included placing a remotely-operated vehicle in Dana Point Harbor and broadcasting images of marine life to area schools.

The institute was later renamed the Ocean Institute, and Helling served as its president from 1997-2002. During that period, he led a $16.5 million fundraising campaign to renovate and expand the institute, which educates about 350,000 visitors per year.

Helling left the institute in 2008 to become president and chief executive of Orange County’s Crystal Cove Alliance, a non-profit group that works to protect and preserve the Crystal Cove State Park Historic District.