So I would have baby walruses imprint on my voice and crawl up on my lap with these big bottles of milk and clam juice. And as they got to be 2,000 pounds, they’d still wanna climb up in my lap because they were imprinted. I was their mother. They… Read More
I’m gonna digress a bit, but I don’t know a lot of management programs for walruses now. There’s not, the future of walruses right now in human care is very shaky at best. And that’s really a function of only small amounts of facilities and zoos would get one or… Read More
So 16 months later, 14 to 15 months, really, later, the pups are born on the ice in May and the males aren’t around anymore. But that’s not the way we managed it. And, nowadays, that’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re shifting walruses, the few that are around in North… Read More
Why do we do this? Or why do we feed that?… Read More
Or why are the clams already shelled?… Read More
Don’t the walruses crack their own shells like they do in a wild?” And so I’d always ask lots of questions. And that was probably something that helped me in my career because people always realized that I didn’t have the answers. So I asked, and that really created, I… Read More
At that particular time, it was run by a company called Oceanarium Incorporated who actually owned the Marineland in St. Augustine. And then it went through a series of ownership changes. I mean, it was Hollywood Turf Club for a while with Irwin Allen from 20th Century Fox Studios, the… Read More
What kind of animals did you take care of in the beginning?… Read More
And what were some of the uniquenesses about all of these new animals you’re meeting for the first time and working with them?… Read More
All of them were unique in their own way. And there was an older keeper named Andy Soric. And he had come from Yugoslavia, which is now a different country. And he would tell me and teach me everything about the walruses, the otters and the seals. And he would… Read More
Marineland of the Pacific was a beautiful place. It was right on the bluff on Palos Verdes, California. It looked out, on a clear day you can see Catalina. And it had killer whales and pilot whales and dolphins and sea lions and walrus and fish. And it was a… Read More
And it just slowly went downhill simply because there wasn’t the attendance driven because it wasn’t new. Read More
And who was your boss at this time?… Read More
Who was it that ran the place?… Read More
What kind of park did you find when you first got there?… Read More
What was it like?… Read More
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I love terrestrial animals too. And, you know, later in my years, obviously, I was in charge of the collection of Busch Gardens also, but it was all about marine animals, because that’s what Marineland of the Pacific was. Let’s talk about your beginnings then. Read More
So you’re hired as a keeper to begin with, or less than a keeper in the Marineworld?… Read More
Or Marineland. It’s now closed and gone. Actually, no, I don’t think the designation was a keeper. I think I was basically a fish house guy, is what they called it. And so every day you go in and bucket thousands of pounds of fish and put ice on it… Read More
We didn’t air thaw. And in fact, in those days, it was ironic in a way as you look at the husbandry practices that evolved and developed, I took the fish from this cold storage point to the different areas in the park and just stacked it in shelves. And… Read More