When E-Cards Ruled the Sea: My Halloween Hit at the Aquarium

Years ago, when I was working at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, there was this short golden age of e-cards. Before TikTok, before Reels, before memes, there were greetings that people actually forwarded to their friends. It was a strange and wonderful time in digital media.

For Halloween, I created two of the biggest e-cards the Aquarium had ever launched. One featured a vampire, the other a fangtooth, that deep-sea creature with a face only its ecosystem could love. Both of them had attitude, motion, and just enough bite to make people click “send.”

Back when file sizes actually mattered. I remember sitting at my desk, listening to the low hum of the server room and watching that vampire fade into the darkness just before the fangtooth lunged out of the deep. It was part science, part mischief, and entirely the reason I loved that job.

When the e-cards went live, the response was electric. Teachers shared them with classrooms, parents sent them to their kids, and somehow, the vampire-fangtooth duo made their way onto email chains across the country. It was the Aquarium’s version of going viral. Long before that was even a phrase.

Looking back, those e-cards were small moments of joy stitched together with creativity. They remind me how even in the simplest projects, there’s room to surprise people, make them laugh, and teach them something cool about the ocean.