Joseph R. Geraci Papers 1854-2012 (bulk 1960-1999)

Dr. Joseph R. Geraci (1938-2015) was a scientist, veterinarian, and a leading expert in marine mammal medicine and aquatic wildlife conservation. He was a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada from 1973 to 1995 and a clinical professor at Tufts University from 1994 to 1996. In 1997 he became the National Aquarium in Baltimore's deputy executive director, which was a position he held until 2005. From 2005 to 2006 Geraci was the president of the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut. Geraci was often asked to investigate and advise on issues related to marine mammal health for government agencies in the United States, Canada, Spain, and Brazil.

Joseph R. Geraci was born January 16, 1938 in Lawrence, Massachussetts. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Suffolk University in Boston in 1959. He then earned a V.M.D. from the Universtiy of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine in 1963. Between 1964-1966 Geraci studied ichthyology at New York University and then went on to receive a doctorate in 1970 from McGill University in Montreal, Canada at its Institute of Oceanography. Geraci also worked as an associate curator at the New York Aquarium from 1965 to 1966 and a curator and pathologist at the Montreal Aquarium from 1966 to 1969.

Geraci worked as a professor, first in the Department of Zoology at the University of Guelph from 1973 to 1978 and then in the Department of Pathology at the University of Guelph's Ontario Veterinary College from 1978 to 1995 where he directed its marine mammal program. When he was appointed to be the National Aquarium in Baltimore's deputy executive director in 1997 he helped guide the aquarium's Marine Animal Rescue Program to care for numerous stranded animals and help return many of them to their natural habitats. Geraci wrote and co-wrote over 120 journal articles, 21 book chapters, and seven books, including a handbook for veterinary students called Marine Mammal Care.

Besides his work in universities and aquariums, Geraci was also the founding editor of the journal, Marine Mammal Science, a founding member of the International Association for Aquatic Animal Medicine and the Society for Marine Mammalogy, and on the founding board of the National Marine Life Center in Bourne, Massachusetts. Geraci compiled numerous government-contracted reports about marine mammal health and led investigations of mass marine mammal deaths in Canda, the North Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. In 2010 he was appointed to the National Academy of Science's Committee to study the effects on marine mammals of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Joseph R. Geraci died at the age of 77 in 2015 from cancer.

The Joseph R. Geraci Papers collection, 1854-2011, contains research notes and material, lectures, photographs, photo slides and negatives, reports, manuals, audiovisual material, and books relating to Joseph R. Geraci's work in marine mammal medicine and aquatic wildlife conservation. The collection also includes documents from the National Marine Life Center. While the collection contains material produced as early as 1854 and as late as 2010, most of the items are from the 1960s through the 1990s. The majority of the collection is photographic materials.

This collection is arranged in six series: Research and Professional Materials, Slides and Photographs, Reports and Publications, Audiovisual Material and Born Digital Materials, Correspondence, and Books

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[Identification of item], Joseph R. Geraci Papers, MC 00663, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC

Gift of Brent Whitaker, February 2019 (Accession no. 2019.0058) and gift of Laurie Allen, August 2019 (Accession no. 2019.0225), and February 2023 (Accession no. 2023.0024).

Processed by: Samantha Thorne, Phillip MacDonald, and Hannah Chapman, 2020 August. Addition processed by Frances Fleming, May 2023.