The animals were healthy, but there was a diet issue all the time. And it created, within that enrichment paradigm, you created bullies like you do in school. And some dolphins would bully. It would bully to be over there by the food or by the activity and take it… Read More
I did that also with a sperm whale one time. It about knocked the regulator out of my mouth when I was diving. But the animals are just as interested in us as we are in them. And I think if somebody has a quiet moment with a dolphin and… Read More
So would this be the same, the pros and cons, and are you kind of speaking about it or when we talk about dolphin swim programs?… Read More
And you’re thinking, “Well, what’s the purpose of this?… Read More
Where do they get the idea that that’s okay to do?” So that’s disturbing to me and I don’t understand it. Do we know where they get that idea, or is it- Well, obviously, it’s monkey see, monkey do. They’ve seen somebody else do it or they’ve watched it on… Read More
What’s the pros and the cons of dolphin petting (indistinct)?… Read More
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