Yeah. I’ve been impressed with the dedication of the people in it. I think we have some really topnotch people working in zoos. And again, they’re working there because they like the work. They want the work. They like working with animals, or maybe they’re educators that like educating people… Read More
About the zoo profession?… Read More
What do you really know?… Read More
What can you tell me about this profession, that you’ve been involved with. Read More
I think zoos are very important today, because of the educational value. The zoo operation may again, evolve into more postage stamp collection of animals just simply because we don’t know what we’re gonna do with all the animals we breed. But certainly they’re important they’re the one place where… Read More
And based on your time at the zoo, and your experience, do you feel that we still need zoos today?… Read More
I haven’t been involved in animal medicine in 22 years. Read More
And that we did succeed in doing. Read More
Are you still involved in animal medicine today?… Read More
I don’t think mainly because of all the regulations that they have to satisfy. But we are turning up new animals, interesting animals in deeper water. During the time you were zoo director, and you talked about moving the zoo, and it was a big job and it was a… Read More
And say until about 20 years ago, a friend of mine happened to be fishing out in a Gulf stream and he’s a commercial fisherman, and he pulled one of these sand tigers in and he called me up and he said, “I’ve got this weird looking sand tiger. “The… Read More
Now from a procedure point of view, did you literally have to go boat, to boat, to boat, to talk to the fishermen?… Read More
No, the word got out. The word got out that I was buying white shark jaws, and I was paying good money. A couple thousand dollars for a 15, 16 footer. So it made it worthwhile for the fishermen. And did you have anything to do, or is your work… Read More
And it goes back to the thing. If you want something really screwed up, you get the federal government involved in either regulating it or managing it or something. But just keep the feds outta your business (chuckles). Read More
Now of the thousands of fishermen in Florida, how are we gonna know which fishermen gonna actually accidentally catch a white shark?… Read More
And I said, I don’t wanna kill them. I wanna get the ones that are already dead and study them. Can’t do that. So few years went by and finally the feds came along and they said, okay, we’ll issue a permit, to salvage dead white sharks. But when you… Read More
And St. Petersburg, one was caught off there, Fort Myers. So when this list came along, I called up the lady that was in charge of enforcing this. And I explained to her what I’d done, that I had this arrangement with commercial fishermen when they caught a white shark… Read More
And what was the other one?… Read More
Anyway, none of them were commercial species. White sharks was the other one. None of them were commercial species. So what the feds did, is they bowed to the commercial fishermen and they developed the list all right, but wasn’t nothing was commercial. Well, I had an arrangement at the… Read More
Years ago, it’s going back in late 1990s. We’re going back 15 years ago, 18 years ago. There was this big pressure to declare some sharks as being off limits for commercial fishermen. And so the feds, they did the same thing they did with the Endangered Species Act. They… Read More