There’s people that are really good at certain areas. Again, I was a very strong proponent of cross training, even fresh water to salt water type of thing, where people would get a more, a widespread portfolio, if you will, which would help us in the short term, but also… Read More
It was, it was a eye-opening experience for me when it, I first became the director, just a little background, I had served my highest level in the fishes department, and I was an assistant curator, and then I was a curator of marine mammals, and then I became director,… Read More
Maybe a piece of legislation that might be of interest to us, maybe some regulatory activity. And there’s often, as you know, another side to the issue. It’s not just our opinion. So it was really important for us to get to know those individuals on a personal basis, which… Read More
What skillset qualities does a director of collections need to be able to run an aquarium?… Read More
He goes, well, I, I got three roommates. I’m like, oh, okay. So I think the monetary part has a lot to do with being male or female. Now, the Aquarius don’t get paid more than the marine mammal trainers, but the bottom line is, I think it comes down… Read More
And, you know, they did get to have great animal experiences and everything, but the percentage that actually moved into a full-time role was pretty small. So a lot of interest. And you talked about different positions, which we’ll we’ll talk about, but skill sets. Read More
The women necessarily were at that time, you know, more of a subordinate role as far as the money coming into the house. So they could afford to work for a public aquarium like Shedd and not make a lot of money. So I think that was part of it. Read More
I says, how can you afford on this salary to live there?… Read More
The women, yeah, that was it. The women, when I was in the fish’s department, the first female Aquarius was, she could hold her own. And, you know, the guys accepted her and everything and she was expressive, shall we say, out there and did a good job. And then… Read More
Sure. It, it has been certainly the course in the marine mammal field for a large degree. It depends on the, the size of the animals. If you’re working with killer whales, SeaWorld, for instance, actually has a workout area, a gym, so people can stay physically fit and pretty… Read More
But I’m, I’m trying to recall the direction I was going on this. What was the question About the women coming In?… Read More
So there was, you know, necropsies performed on animals trying to identify a bacterium or a parasite so he could treat those animals from that same tank that were still alive. The challenges came probably toward mid to late eighties, and that’s when we got into the marine mammal field. Read More
Can you comment on that?… Read More
We did have, way back, we had a dolphin, a South American river dolphin, that was the subject of, one woman in particular is concerned that, you know, we shouldn’t have that, this poor animal suffering, da da da. And I didn’t deal with her directly, but I could see… Read More
Certainly the main thing was water quality monitoring, but also it had to do with the actual analysis of why did an animal get sick or why did it die?… Read More
Certainly the smaller fishes. The other thing when, besides horse art, weed feed is trout chow. It’s just dried pelleted foods like dog chow, but formulated for fish still, we use that in the off days. But on the the regular feeding days, we got into different species of fish… Read More
You know, it was a time of tremendous growth at the aquarium. Not only of the animal collection, but in the old directions we were going. Real easy thing is, when I first started as an Aquarius, the diet we offered the fish was very basic and included horse heart. Read More
And I’m like, well, I pull my people back, you know, outta safety. He goes, we actually received that threat. And I’m like, and they also told me that if you’re beyond three nautical miles from the coastline, we can’t be out there. We can’t help you. And we were… Read More
Now you’ve held many positions, but being a curator, especially in the eighties when you were there, what were the advantages as you saw them or disadvantages of being in that position?… Read More
And at one point, one of the Coast Guard individuals said, what would you do if one of the activists jumped in the water with a knife?… Read More