Yes, yes. It started when I was assistant curator of fishes where one of my responsibilities was, for instance, oiling the fish. And I have to admit, I was pretty shy about colon these vendors up there I didn’t know anything about. And, you know, asking, you know, for best… Read More
And they were sending us a product that was less than desirable. We’d get boxes of smelt and it’d be freezer burned, meaning it was dried and kind of crinkled. It was freezer, you know, the animal tissues. It shrunk. I think their attitude was, I got to fish, eat… Read More
And I got to a point where I started rejecting shipments and finally the head of pick fisheries calls Bill Breaker and says, Hey, what the heck’s going on over there?… Read More
Well that’s because we are creating hiding places for them. And we set the tank up, you got the water up, you got the water chemistry good, you’d introduced the little guys first. So they get to know where to hide and then eventually the sharks go in. And not… Read More
Yeah. Everything for this exhibit?… Read More
Yes. Yes. Are you speaking of the Oceanarium exhibit?… Read More
Well, how do you know they’re not gonna get picked off by the sharks?… Read More
And it was, it was a lot of fun for us because number one, we saw the benefit of more space for the animals, the fishes to swim in. And man, this looks pretty cool. We had a guy that was just fantastic with plants and he’d get this thing… Read More
Certainly when we did the, the wild reef exhibit had the large, we call the shark exhibit and it’s got some very neat animals in there. But you know, with sharks, and we had a sawfish in there, they need space. They need a lot of space. And by the… Read More
And we said, no, it’s just we have it and we’re just not gonna pursue it at this time. Read More
And we never did. And the permit expired. So Now at, at this time in this new position, were you starting to develop any new philosophies about exhibit design and developing a collection?… Read More
You know, bigger is always better type of thing. And with the oceanarium, I, I was quite satisfied with the size of the exhibits and the spaces we had. And at that point, you know, I was all marine mammals all the time with the fishes. We were getting more… Read More
I’m sure it killed him. I’m sure he just like, he says, but we’re gonna pursue the permit. We’re gonna get the permit. We just will not exercise the permit. Read More
And that’s what we did. He was concerned that if we did not pursue the permit, the animal rights activists would say, aha, victory, they’re dropping out of the false killer whale game, you know?… Read More
We realize that we’re gonna be in a pinch. And by the way, the false killer whales could prey on the young dolphins or whales, not outta the realm of possibility. So we, the three of us said, you know what, I don’t, I don’t think we should pursue getting… Read More
Come on up. So we each grabbed a chair and I swear his chair was elevated so that he was always looking down on you like the Wizard of Oz. His office was like that as well. He had a long entry away before he get to the desk. And… Read More
If we have baby belugas and baby dolphins, where are the false killer whales gonna go?… Read More
Yeah, well it was a regular participant in the curator’s meeting because that was his focus. The oceanarium, we had regular meetings, you know, sometimes he’d ask me, you know, about specific animal groups and who we were talking to about collecting and about, you know, veterinarians that might be… Read More
And Ken Ramirez and I, and we sat down and we’re looking at the pool design and talking about the animal collection and how we’re gonna manage them. Like if we had to move animals around, we had set it up. So there were four interconnected pools and we had… Read More
But if we got the animals, we had yet yet to acquire the false killer whales, it’s like, ah, how is that gonna work?… Read More