Yep. The special exhibits was, gosh, highly successful. And it didn’t always originally deal with live animals with, that’s the trend we went to, to the point that it was live animals. Our point in doing it was to highlight a certain group of animals like frogs. And you could… Read More
I remember we had a lizards exhibit, we had a, a monitor lizard and Komodo dragon was on loan to us, big animal. Read More
A lot of people are like, wow, you know, what’s that doing here at an aquarium?… Read More
And then what happens afterward to these animals?… Read More
What is the advantage of that?… Read More
And you know, as far as working with other facilities, that becomes more of an international effort, which is more successful I think. So The Shedd has, with design the Shedd has had a number of what I’d call temporary exhibits that have lasted a long time frog seahorses. Read More
Seahorses in many cases are in a tough way because the environment’s not what it should be. And there was a lot of international effort at not only China to propagate them so we don’t have to extract them from the wild. But also talking to local communities that are… Read More
Yes, yes. Generally US facilities that I’m aware of are Sister Aquariums in Europe and probably Japan most commonly. A lot of interest on, in both geographic areas in fishes and zoos and aquariums and that type of thing. And then, you know, when you say like a sister facility,… Read More
I mean it’s, you know, the classic example of food fish that I think of as orange ruffy, when they first came on the scene, it was like, oh my gosh, this fish is delicious. And the community just went crazy collecting, you know, the commercial fisheries collecting these animals. Read More
And does, do aquariums have sister aquarium relationships?… Read More
But the idea of them approaching people in boats is not a good thing. Witness down in Florida, Dr. Randy Wells’ work in Sarasota Bay, how many times they find animals dead that have ingested things, that fishing hooks, things that are injurious to their health. The, the, I’m way… Read More
This poor guy doesn’t know this environment and is gonna be confused and most likely picked off by a predator probably in a day or two. So the born, born free philosophy sounds good, was great in the movie, but it doesn’t really work as putting animals back in the… Read More
Is it for the purpose of putting them back in the wild or do you want ’em for your collection?… Read More
Matter of fact, we had a program at Shedd ko called Shedd the Straw. They had a number, I don’t know where this came from, but they said there’s upwards of 500 million plastic straws used every single day in the United States. Think about it, you get a cocktail… Read More
I would say it’s more the latter. There’s very few areas where you’re likely to put an animal back into the wild and it’s gonna do well because it’s never experienced that environment. In the news recently, there was a beluga whale that showed up in Norway on its own. Read More
You talked about conservation, but what kind of conservation programs do you believe an aquaquarium should be involved with today that is involving what the wildlife conservation nationally or internationally?… Read More
Part of the, the conservation work that I favor on any scale is kind of the preservation of habitat. You know, and I’m sure this happens in all over the country, but invasive species is a big deal, certainly with aquatic animals, but also with plants. But you know, there… Read More
And you know, we’ve even talked about braille interpretation of exhibits. I’m like, yeah, but they can’t see the exhibits. Yeah, but there’s somebody with them that can describe the animals and they can read a little bit about it. And I’m like, oh, never thought about that. Or something… Read More
How do you clean it? And there were all kinds of challenges that way. It’s, you know, I think, I know the open-minded nature of the job is what yields success. It’s like if you are receptive to new ideas and you know, you’re not only supporting someone’s interest, hopefully,… Read More
Right before I went there, I saw a father come in with a young child and this kid started screaming when I was under the dryer and I pulled back ’cause I thought, oh my gosh. And I’m like, apologizing, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. And he says, ah, no… Read More