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
And then I learned how to train animals. And then I started to do a lot of different things with some of the stranded animals, because in Southern California, you have a lot of sea lions and elephant seals that come up on the beach sick. And all they would… Read More
Well, I’m certainly in their hall of fame for rugby, and, sure, a lot of people send me notes all the time about the work I’ve done all the last 45 years. Yeah, but it’s a great school. Read More
So do you believe that your initial interest in marine mammals, as opposed to terrestrial animals, came from this first unique encounter?… Read More
It was exactly at that point. I had gone to school. I wanted to be a dentist and I was in pre-medicine and pre-dentistry. And I had a very low lottery number my senior year of college and I was gonna get drafted. And I’d already gone for my physical. Read More
So I didn’t have to go to Vietnam. Read More
But I had a BS in biology and I’m thinking, “What am I gonna do?… Read More