sentences:  The idea to display marine habitats was inspired by the work of ecologist Ed Ricketts in his 1939 book on intertidal ecology, "Between Pacific Tides".In the early-1980s this was a unique approach to the design of public aquariums, as the two largest public aquariums at the time in the United States—Boston's New England Aquarium (1969) and Baltimore's National Aquarium (1981)—focused on "magnificent coral reef exhibits or big sharks", and displayed few local species.Monterey Bay Aquarium displays 35,000 animals belonging to over 550 species in of water.