Interview 29556 – Caption Index: 88
Again, I was fortunate right place. And I knew the curator very well. He knew my abilities. He also was big into fish disease analysis. Read More
Again, I was fortunate right place. And I knew the curator very well. He knew my abilities. He also was big into fish disease analysis. Read More
So short a position as lab manager and what is this new position?… Read More
Right. Why?… Read More
Yes. Yeah, it was considered a step up. You had oversight of all the animals in the aquaquarium and their potential diseases or whatever. They’re not feeling well, you know, most Aquarius had a good working knowledge because most of ’em came from a home aquarium background. So they’re familiar… Read More
As that. Yep. And then in 81 you become assistant curator. Read More
Nowadays it’s much simpler. We buy a premix and that’s commercially available and it works great. Read More
Now, was this position as lab manager a step up?… Read More
Some of ’em were 80 pound, but I think the sodium chloride was 50 pound. So you bring it up to the lip of the mixing VA cut the top and pour it in. It was a three day operation, if you’re lucky. And I remember at the end of… Read More
And the lab at that time was a one person operation, one big room. The water testing was very simple, very, I mean, we did a number of parameters, but nothing as far as sophisticated equipment disease analysis was often kind of hit and miss. There wasn’t a lot of… Read More
They’re not familiar with that either. So the aquatic veterinary medicine world was way behind zoo and terrestrial animal at that time. And then I just have to share with you the salt water, we would make it up, we had a reservoir of a hundred thousand gallons. So you… Read More
You know, at the time, advancement in the early days happened pretty quickly for me, just because positions opened and I expressed interest. So I was not an Aquarius for that long. I’m trying to think, I think it was 1980 that I might have moved to the lab. And… Read More
At this time, as you’re doing your job and starting out, at what point did you know that you wanted to do more than be an Aquarius?… Read More
And how did you think you might achieve it?… Read More
We’d blown the treasury on the oceanarium and we never did get animatronics. Read More
I remember touring an individual from Disney, and you’re familiar with their animatronics through all their, the animal kingdom or the, what do you call it?… Read More
You know, I probably not in a major way, because I was so new to the aquarium, I, again, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to aquariums in a, you know, my developing years or anything. And when I saw Shedd aquarium, it was kind of like, wow, you… Read More
The magic kingdom. And I’m walking this individual down the north stairs of the Oceanarium. And at the bottom there was a tide pool exhibit, and above it was a tree with an eagle and a nest. And the wings were spread like this. And before we got to the… Read More
The animal weight, as I recall, 230 pounds, it was the shell was like this, just huge. The head was about basketball size and we took four of us and carefully got em outta the exhibit. ’cause they can extend their neck pretty far and easily snap off a finger… Read More
I was like, whoa. That’s what I learned about care and taking care of that animal and how to feed it and everything beyond that. Way back before my time, we actually had a tursi ops, a bottle mills dolphin at the end of gallery one, which in retrospect was… Read More
Were there any experiences then when you started that changed your notion of what an aquaquarium should be?… Read More