Yeah, well, the support system and the veterinary care and lab and all that stuff is at the park, and the water. You have to have a body of water contained that you can manage it. It’s very difficult when a lot of stranders happen. Some people think they’re doing… Read More
And are you being asked to do this or is this part of SeaWorld’s rehabilitation and rescue program?… Read More
It’s part of SeaWorld’s program. It’s part of their DNA. It’s part of the heritage. It’s part of what we did. And the federal and state governments didn’t reimburse any of the money. Read More
What role does SeaWorld play?… Read More
We played a major role in the rehab of that animal, and brought the animal here and rehabbed it and got it to eat and took it back out and tagged it and let it go in the Gulf of Mexico. We spent a lot of energy and time on… Read More
And we had big logistics were with the Coast Guard to take it out on a Coast Guard trawler off of San Diego with these huge, and another ship that had a crane on it and craned it over the edge and let it go. And off it went with… Read More
And, of course, the staff is watching us walk around and look at things. And some of them know who I am for sure, so it wasn’t really a secret what we were doing or why we were there. We just said we were visiting ’cause we were in the… Read More
So at the very end of the discussion, and we’re standing there looking at the whales, and he looks at me he goes, (loudly) “So, should we buy them?” (laughs) And I look at everybody around me and I go, “Yep, That’s a good idea.” You need tot cough?… Read More
(man coughs) So, anyway, the staff there is going, “Wow.” And then, he kind of realized what he’d said and he just goes, “Oh, well, okay. (quietly) Do you wanna buy them? Do we wanna buy?” Anyway, there’s many stories, but he was a quality guy, a quality guy, and… Read More
“This is Kasatka. This is not Shamu.” There is a pygmy whale stranding in 1988. Read More
You know, I heard it died today. Tell me what happened.” So he was involved, and he knew what we were supposed to do. Read More
Is there some good Auggie Busch III story that comes to mind?… Read More
Well, I think that the neatest story, well, there was a lot of stories, actually, but I was talking to a gentleman named Bob Wright who owned Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, Canada. And he had three whales. And he wanted to get out of that particular part of… Read More
And I go, “Monday?” And he goes, “Yeah, fly up to St Louis and we’ll we’ll take the jet,” ’cause he’s a pilot and he flies around in a jet. So on the way, though, we stopped at Bonners Ferry, Idaho to look at the hops. The hops were being… Read More
Another new owner, a very good owner, in a way. They had a division called Busch Entertainment Corporation which owned the Sesame Place park in Philadelphia and the Busch Gardens parks. And it was really interesting, because we had our first sit down with August Busch III, who was the… Read More
He was a tough guy to work for, because he remembered everything. And he would fly down to the parks and visit the parks and have tours and, “Fix this, fix that. Change the flowers.” And you better do what you were requested to do or you weren’t around very… Read More
I don’t think it was that personal, per se, but, you know, personal enough that he’d call me at home in the middle of the night ’cause he came up with an idea, and say, “Brad, we gotta do this,” or, “What the hell happened to this animal?… Read More
Now you had mentioned changing of the guard and so forth, HBJ is, no, Anheuser-Busch purchases SeaWorld from HBJ?… Read More
Correct. Read More
or another new owner?… Read More