I don’t think there’s many pros to it, really. 20 ,30 years ago it just seemed to be the best way to expose somebody to a dolphin, to let them would just go up and touch. And a lot of people would say, “Well, you’re forcing these animals to be… Read More
What changes have you seen during your years in the marine mammal field regarding visitor attitudes at the national level?… Read More
Well, the national level today is exposed to, again, information that’s not always truthful. So I’m seeing the 40 years ago or 30 years ago when people came to visit and they went away feeling very good about what they saw and how you took care of your animals. Now,… Read More
In your career, what issues caused you the most concern, and how do you see the future regarding those same concerns?… Read More
I think the disinterest sometimes with people in the way they treat an animal. When you have a little Asian otter who’s highly trained, a very good little otter, kind of, as they occasionally do, start screeching and running after you ’cause they’re not happy with you and trying to… Read More
Do you think your education could have been better if you had been working at more than this one institution?… Read More
Or does it really make a difference, it depends on the person?… Read More
Well, I think it depends upon the person. I think a lot of people jump around in our community from place to place to place thinking it’s another promotional step. And they’re not really gaining the knowledge they need at each step. I think I was lucky, in a way,… Read More
And so they’re not necessarily the happy, intelligent animal that everybody seems to think because they do have their own social activities and their own pecking orders. And things in their particular culture happens that a lot of people aren’t aware of. So I think we did a disservice by… Read More
Is there a problem, and how should curators be trained today?… Read More
And what is expected of them?… Read More
I think part of the way curators should be trained today is they should have more exposure to some of their peers at other institutions because I think what happens a lot of times is we get brought up within a system, an institutional system, and we think that’s the… Read More
I think that could be part of it. As we were talking earlier, I think we did ourselves a little bit of a disservice early on by saying how intelligent these animals are without really explaining what they use that larger brain for. They use it for acoustics. They use… Read More
And a big male Tursiops came up to her. And she started to pet it. And then she tried to start to swim to shore. Well, it killed her. Of course, nobody saw that in the news. You know, that dolphin killed her. It kept hitting her and hitting her… Read More
I think, longterm, they’re gonna be phased out. I think legislation is going to phase them out simply because social media and the activists are gonna win. And many people now are questioning the keeping citations in captivity. Read More
Why do you think that feeling seems to have increased over the past few years?… Read More
Because of the disinformation that’s out there. People aren’t hearing parts of the story. And they don’t wanna know the complete truth so they just form their opinions and move on. And, unfortunately, once zoos and the aquariums give up marine mammal, the next species that’s in line is the… Read More
Do you think the benefits of maintaining these marine mammals, which you’ve talked about, has just not been conveyed well enough?… Read More
Why do you think aquariums, more specifically, marine mammal facilities, always seem to be a bit on the outside with the general zoo community?… Read More
I think simply because of the attacks that we’re getting. As one friend of mine said to me, “I’m in the Midwest. I don’t have marine mammals. I don have a problem. I don’t want one. I’m gonna just play ostrich for a while.” That’s my comment. “If I hide… Read More