I think it has a great reputation simply because a lot of the founders in the aquarium community came from there. If you go back and look at all the people that started there, like the Jerry Goldsmiths and the Ken Norrises and Tom Ottens and the Brad Andrews and… Read More
Most of the educational work that we did was based upon schools sending busloads of kids. We’d set up guided tours in the early morning and took them through the park and explained to them all of the different animals and what they do. And then they would spend a… Read More
So we created a touch pool within the aquarium areas. But we didn’t have people grabbing them. We had them put in little plexiglass boxes so they could look at two feet and move along. And then we’d put it back in and let the starfish crawl out. And so… Read More
Was there research being conducted of any kind during this time?… Read More
There was quite a bit of research going on in terms of the reproduction of all of the different species and documentation of that. Bill Walker and Ken Norris and all of those individuals set up very nice projects, you know, different projects to study the different fishes. And there… Read More
It’s been duplicated in a lot of places. You can go across the street from here in SeaWorld Orlando to Discovery Cove and there’s a beautiful reef, a artificial reef that you can snorkel through. And, of course, there’s lots of those particular types of exhibit areas in Hawaii now,… Read More
But this was the first of its kind?… Read More
It was the first of its kind. You talked about you had to educate the people. Read More
What educational or research was Marineland conducting when you were there and involved?… Read More
And so that spawned the whole idea, “Why don’t we just build a reef?… Read More
Because people love to snorkel. People love to go into the ocean.” We found, though, a lot of people don’t like to go in the ocean. They’re afraid of it. So this was an educational tool that was unsurpassed, to actually let people put on a little wetsuit, put on… Read More
Has it been duplicated?… Read More
Can you explain why it was groundbreaking?… Read More
It was groundbreaking because it was the first of its kind, number one. And Jerry Goldsmith and I sat and talked about that for months and months and months, about how we would convince the management to spend that kind of money and what the experience would be. So what… Read More
And what we did is we started to have people go in there and snorkel. And then, we ended up getting scuba people to come in, that are certified scuba divers, s to go in and go down and descend in this cage and get close to the animals. Read More
Well, as an associate curator, you would have more animals that you were responsible for and more keepers. So it was divided up, again, into the aquarium department, the animal keeping department and the animal trainers. And so the associate curator of the animal keeping department would be all of… Read More
And I was a hands-on curator. I didn’t wanna step away from that work at all, but I didn’t wanna take their job, because everyone had to do it in a way. And people had to have days off, but we all had to know how to help each other. Read More
Do you think that the keeper staff identified more with you because they know you had done it, you had been in their shoes?… Read More
Absolutely, I think being the fish guy and doing all that work and learning from them and asking them questions and learning the daily processes and not assuming that I knew everything. And I approached it just that way. I would ask questions all the time. And I kind of… Read More
Yeah, that’s a great question. Certainly. I mean, when you graduate or get promoted in this business and you stop working with the animals, I think you dearly miss it, ’cause then you have to start dealing with people. And people talk and people have opinions, which is fine, but… Read More