Stewart Michael McDaniel

Stewart Michael McDaniel, marine biologist, hydroponic farming evangelist and a founding member of the Association of Aquatic Life Support Operators (AALSO), has died. He was 60.

The death was confirmed by his family after Baltimore Police found him unresponsive during a wellness check. No cause has yet been confirmed.

McDaniel was a true renaissance man - a devotee of art, a diehard atheist, a philosopher and a man of science.

McDaniel was born in Ewing, New Jersey, to Doris Jean Stewart McDaniel and Weldon "Mac" McDaniel on May 6, 1965. He grew up in a multi-generational household, with his maternal grandparents, John and Doris Stewart. He attended The Hun School and later Oberlin College where he made lifelong friends so close they became family.

After college, McDaniel worked at the National Zoo and National Aquarium before he was coaxed out to Las Vegas to care for casino magnate Steve Wynn's dolphins at The Mirage and other aquatic life in his hotel properties. Among the most mesmerizing: the otherworldly jellyfish tanks at the Bellagio sushi bar that glowed like underwater lava lamps.

With his own company, McDaniel built aquarium, water and fire features for Las Vegas restaurants and nightclubs, including the fire wall at Rum Jungle in Mandalay Bay and a cylindrical aquarium outside of Michael Mina's Bellagion restaurant filled with silvery sardines that looked like a shaken snow globe.

McDaniel was an ace troubleshooter in the field. Like Macgyver, with a tube sock and a paper clip, he could fix anything and found out-of-the-box solutions for vexing problems. He often had to. The thing that irked him most was when clients value-engineered items out of his water filtration system designs and then came back to him when things he'd warned them about inevitably went wrong.

McDaniel relocated to Central Florida in 2005 and built the team at Water Life Design, which was eventually bought by PentAir. With Water Life Design, he designed and built water features and water filtration systems for zoos and aquariums at SeaWorld, Walt Disney World, the Florida Aquarium, the Tampa Bay Rays Stadium, Lowry Park Zoo and the Sanford Zoo, to name a few.

He also became an evangelist for hydroponic farming and demonstrated how it could be used on a small footprint in downtown Winter Garden in a rooftop greenhouse where two tanks of tilapia were maintained and their waste used to fertilize hydroponically grown vegetables. It was one of his favorite projects and he delighted in taking friends and clients for tours and explaining the process. He later joined the company Backyard Farms, showing homeowners how they could implement similar operations on one acre of their own land.

McDaniel was a natural teacher. He loved sharing his knowledge of science, especially with kids. In one of his favorite moments, a story he told often because it delighted him endlessly, he attempted to explain the concept of symbiosis, in which two creatures live together for their mutual benefit, to some schoolchildren using the example of the clownfish living with the stinging sea anemones. After he was done, one young boy asked, "Why doesn't it just kill it?" referring to the sea anemone. McDaniel thought he hadn't explained well enough that the clownfish got protection from the anemone while the anemone benefitted from the clownfish eating parasites and defending it from its own predators. But even after the second explanation, the boy had the same question: Why doesn't it kill it? Finally McDaniel asked him what he didn't understand. The boy said, "You said it was 'an enemy.'"

McDaniel made friends wherever he went. It was a true gift. He could enter a room of strangers and come out with 25 friends. He founded a chess club in Winter Garden and passed his love of the game on to his son Fletcher, 19. He loved astronomy and often set up his telescope for watch parties to view planets, meteor showers, eclipses.

McDaniel also struggled with alcoholism in the final years of his life. Although he spent some time in rehab and was surrounded by others in recovery and friends who were sometimes frustrated and angry with him and yet always there to help, that was no match for the disease.

McDaniel is survived by his son Fletcher Dworkin-McDaniel and his Oberlin friends who loved him deeply and supported him through everything. The loss is immeasurable. He will be missed.