Well, basically, the new responsibilities was encompassing the whole animal collection at that point for all the three SeaWorld parks. And we were in charge of all the, you know, veterinary, education, conservation, animal transport, aviculture, aquarium, so all the different disciplines that were under that, those buckets were under… Read More
Was it that you, as you said, raised your hand, or was this a natural transition?… Read More
It was an interesting transition because I had only been working, after SeaWorld had bought the parks from HBJ, or HBJ bought the parks, or the Marineland park, excuse me, HBJ owned SeaWorld. They bought the Marineland park and then closed it, as I said earlier. And I was there… Read More
So I had to double my effort (chuckles) to try and get good relationships built with everybody that had been there for a long, long time. And I was sort of the new kid on the block. So it was fun, but I did the same thing I did in… Read More
I just asked, “Why? What’s your job?… Read More
And all we would do is sit down with the directors and producers and say, “What do you want?… Read More
We can’t do that. We can do this, we can do this.” And we’d modify the script accordingly. And so it worked out very well. It was always fun to meet people like that, though, ’cause Hollywood was Hollywood. It’s 1988, you’re the assistant zoological director of SeaWorld, you’re moving… Read More
How did this position, this assistant zoological director of SeaWorld come about?… Read More
And how did that work then?… Read More
Are you, or the animals were bothered?… Read More
Well, filming at Marineland, sure, there was a lot of different filming that went on. I mean, “Sea Hunt” was filmed there, a lot of the different Hollywood shows because of the location and the uniqueness of the animals. Read More
Who’s doing this part of the job?… Read More
Actually, part of the keeping department actually was assigned to do that. So we had rescue trucks that would go out and pick up the animals. And we had a network with a coordination of lifeguards and a stranding network with National Marine Fishery Service. So there was a good… Read More
And then they’d come to Marineland to see their animals, if they lived. Of course, if they didn’t live, we would call them up and tell them, “This animal didn’t live, and here’s why.” What we found, and I’ve had the experience, the necropsy, or autopsy, hundreds of marine animals… Read More
And Murray was a marine mammal parasitologist. And once I met him and realized what the work he was doing, I said, “Well, let’s discover the life cycle of some of these other worms. Let’s figure out where they’re coming from.” So we would actually do that. We’d collect the… Read More
Looking back on those times at Marineland, what’s your fondest memory?… Read More
What makes you the proudest of your time there?… Read More
I think my fondest memory at Marineland was the people I worked with and the success we had in sustainability. And we had sea lion pups and walrus pups and harbor seal pups and dolphin babies and dolphin calves. That, and the fact that we really, I think, perfected the… Read More
So I think being able to share those joys and those ideas with our staff and the kids, our staff love to talk to them. And it was also fun to talk to adults, even though sometimes they didn’t listen much. Strandings happen at different times of the day and… Read More
I just wanted to see what they were talking about so I could understand how they were describing what they were looking at. Because sometimes, as you know, people will say, “Well, the animal is looking funny today because it’s doing this (coughs).” And you go, “Oh, okay, well, let’s… Read More