The National Aquarium marked the passing of recently retired General Curator Jack Cover, who died on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026 after a brief illness. Cover, 69, had been retired from his official role for just over a year, after a 37-year career at the Aquarium.
The leadership, staff, and board of directors extolled Cover’s “keen scientific mind and steady, gentle demeanor,” which they credited with shaping the Aquarium’s “mission and trajectory while inspiring virtually every major exhibit space conceived throughout his tenure.” A press release described him as a “driving force” behind the institution’s evolution from a simple attraction to a “hands-on conservation organization active throughout his beloved Chesapeake Bay region.”
In August 2024, Cover oversaw the installation and debut of the Aquarium’s Harbor Wetland, the free, outdoor, recreated wetland habitat that encapsulated his life’s work of sharing the complex and captivating Chesapeake Bay ecosystems with Aquarium visitors.
“My hope is that when people see the life this wetland attracts, from tiny microorganisms to fishes, crabs, water birds and even small mammals like muskrats and otters – all of which we’re already seeing here — they might reconsider our local waterways and perhaps even take better care of our natural surroundings,” Cover said when Harbor Wetland opened.
“There is no National Aquarium as we know it today without Jack Cover,” said Jennifer Driban, the National Aquarium’s interim president and CEO. “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.”
Cover was born and raised in Hampden with his parents and three siblings, he became fascinated by wildlife at the age of six or seven when he encountered his first reptile, a ringneck snake. That set him on a path that took him through books on snakes, lizards, and amphibians from the Enoch Pratt Free Library and out into the city to find animals in the nature that surrounded him in the parks, streams, and plants.
He graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Towson University, and after a brief stint in a lab extracting venom from a variety of poisonous animals, he turned to the slightly less deadly world of zoos and aquariums. Cover was a reptile keeper at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas for four years and then came back to Baltimore to consult on the National Aquarium’s “Hidden Life” exhibits. He remained at the Aquarium for the remainder of his career.
“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,” Cover said at the time. “Hidden Life set the bar for high-quality habitat exhibits, and that’s what I wanted to do.”
His love of the Chesapeake Bay and Maryland hardly kept him stateside, however, as his work took him around the world. He traveled to Suriname to study nearly extinct poison dart frogs, and to Australia to work with biologists and government officials on the design and opening of the Aquarium’s “Australia” pavilion in 2005. He was also in demand as the Aquarium’s spokesperson, appearing on dozens of local and national broadcasts, including “The David Letterman Show” with his exotic animal friends.
Charmaine Dahlenburg worked closely with Cover as the Aquarium’s director of field conservation, including for more than a decade on the Harbor Wetland. She contends he was more than a scientist, because of his innate curiosity and love of exploration.
“The one thing that sticks out to me most about Jack (was) his informal knowledge, particularly of the Chesapeake Bay,” Dahlenburg said. “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.”
Cover is survived by Carole, his wife of 42 years, and Zak, their son.
“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,” read the press release. “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 expressed profound sorrow at the loss, and gratitude for the outpouring of support from their communities. A conservation fund is being established in commemoration of Cover’s life and work with the Natural History Society of Maryland.
The National Aquarium has made a visual retrospective of Jack Cover’s career available for viewing by the public here, no password necessary.
