Jim Robinett

My name is Jim Robinett. I was born in Chicago and my birthdate is February 13th, 1952.

What was your childhood like?

Ah, great memories. I still relive my childhood, especially around Christmas time, but I don’t remember much from my first five years. ’cause you know, you’re kind of young, but I always consider Milwaukee my adopted hometown. ’cause I moved up there when I was five years old. I lived up there till I was almost 15. So my formative years, if you will, were involved in, in Milwaukee, which I still love going up there. I’m still in touch with several grade school friends. We get together to watch a Packer game once a year.

It was just a a, a wonderful place to grow up. I I wouldn’t be above moving back there if my wife would agree to it, but it’s a nice easy place to go visit.

What did your parents do?

My dad worked, well first of all, he was in the National Guard during the war latter years. He got involved with working on planes out at O’Hare Airport before. It is what it is today. Used to have a military component out there and because he was one of the smaller guys, he would climb inside a wing and work with the Riveter on the outside to rivet the panels of a wing. So that was kind of like in his high school days, he went to the University of Illinois. He was on the Navy Pier Campus when it was part of the University of Illinois campus. And he ended up working for a continental can company, which is no longer an operation. He was in research and development initially, and then went into sales, which was an advantage because when he is trying to sell the product, he knows how it was constructed and he was able to troubleshoot a lot of things. And he did that for pretty much the rest of his career.

When he retired from them, he ended up working for a smaller can company for a couple years. But then he left that and my mom was always the homemaker. I remember coming home from grade school at lunchtime about three blocks away, and mom would always have lunch ready for me. And I had to go take the food out to Sparky and give him his dog food for lunch. And she, she did work for, was it Kelly Nut company at one time. But I never knew her to work outside of the house. So it was a, a wonderful childhood. We grew up on the northwest side of Chicago.

And do you have any early memories of aquariums?

Not really. I’m trying to think. We did go to zoos occasionally. My, my greatest memory was Milwaukee Zoo and it was a big deal for me when I became old enough to take a bus down to the zoo in Milwaukee and our family would go there as well. But there was, gosh, I don’t remember any aquarium portion to that zoo and never really went to she Aquarium. The earliest memory I have, for instance, of going to she Aquarium was, I think it was my senior year of high school.

We went there, but really not a lot of involvement with going to aquariums and, you know, a little bit more to zoos. So. And Did you have, were you drawn to any animals?

You’s mentioned a dog, but any, Yeah, you know, for some reason gorillas were always impressive to me. I mean, gosh, it had, I think his name was s Samson up at Milwaukee and just this austere exhibit space, I felt so bad. Tiled had a scale at one side. Occasionally the gorilla would sit on the scale and people go, oh my god, 600 pounds. You know, they had a shatterproof glass on the exhibit. It was all glassed in on the front and on one of the sides. And the poor animal would just sit there by himself and sometimes people would taunt him. And I remember him coming over and like slamming a glass and everybody would be like, he’s coming out.

He never came out. But it was just a big impressive animal. And I guess, you know, gorillas and, you know, most primates generally I found really interesting. Not so much hoofstock or, you know, rhinos are cool, hippos are cool. But yeah, my exposure is mostly to Zeus.

And when did you first consider even the idea of working in an aquarium?

Gosh, probably wasn’t until my friend didn’t, from grad school say, Hey, there’s a job opening at Shedd aquarium. ’cause again, my interest was in working at a, an aquaculture facility. As a matter of fact, I had that opportunity. And this was a weird turn of events in grad school. I had a good friend, Steve Sanchez. He was studying bacteria fish. I was studying parasites of fish. We used to kid around all the time about someday we’re gonna have our own fish farm operation.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got the job at Shedd, I’m there for about five months. Steve writes me this long letter, which I, I came upon last couple of years. I thought it was long gone. He said, Hey man, it’s happening. I got a spot out here in California. It’s a former olive processing plant, but we’ve got earth and ponds. We just have to regrade them, you know, get the weeds out. We’re gonna have to set it up though. We have to do a lot of PVC plumbing. I learned arc welding.

I worked at jackhammer settling, torch cutting. I mean we were doing everything to start this operation. And the bottom line is he’s, he’s offered me a position out there and he said, you know, come on out here. We’ll give you part ownership in the company. We’ll get you a car. I’m like, I’m loving it at she aquarium. And I had this tremendous social life, you know, mid twenties, a lot of people they went to school with came into the city. ’cause we’re all from the city. And we’d get together several times a week, you know, it’s like, man, life is great.

And then I get this letter, I’m like, oh. And I finally, it was a tough decision. I said, you know what, I gotta try it. I gotta go for it. So five months at the aquarium, I, I tell ’em I’m leaving and I’m like, ah, I hope I’m doing the right thing. So I go out there and it was a lot of work. We were easily working 12 hour days, if not longer and often seven days a week. And it was exhausting work. So it was a good thing. I was young in my mid twenties, the operation was being funded by a businessman in our huge community of porterville, 15,000 people.

And he had several, he owned several equipment rental facilities and had other business interests. And we were one of them. But when we came to him and said, you know, our business plan is such and we’re probably not gonna realize a profit for five years, he kind of started losing interest to the point that we needed a four wheel drive truck to go and haul animals when we got them. And also to use them for feeding the animals in the ponds. And he’s like, now I, not yet. We’re not gonna get a truck yet. So my friend had to sell this prize motorcycle, so he bought a four wheeler drive truck. So that was kind of the beginning of like, eh, this isn’t gonna work. So that plus the fact that my social life ground to a halt, 15,000 people.

There was nobody my age give or take five years. And I remember I was so desperate to meet people. I went out to a couple of bars, one of which was in a Holiday Inn, the other was in a Chinese restaurant. So that speaks to desperation. That went nowhere. And also, I missed my family and friends tremendously. And the environment was not at all what I was familiar with. And it was, it was the San Joaquin Valley, which ecologically is deserts. It’s just, it got hot hit 110 degrees in the summer.

The river that went along our property never had water in it. The six months I was out there. And my only fun was when friends would come to visit me and we went up into the mountains camping. So after six months I said, oh, I told, I, I knew this was gonna be an issue, but I said, Steve, it, it’s not working for me.

I’m going back. And he’s like, oh, come on man, you know?

And I said it, I’m sorry, I’ve just not been happy out here and I wish you the best of luck.

And came back to Chicago and I thought, great, what am I gonna do now with a biology degree?

So I called she aqua, I said, Hey, just in case anything opens, I’m back in town. Turns out the very position I had vacated about eight months earlier was open. So if they took me back and I said, okay, this time I’ll stay. So 40 years later I was good to my word, but I never dreamed of working in a public aquarium. I always thought aquaculture, I’m gonna be good at that. I’m gonna love that. Good outside job, physical work. You realize too, based on the level of work, by the time you’re probably in your forties, it’d be tough to continue doing the same level of work. So I was very fortunate that the shot of cram came into my life and it worked out so well.

So this is in 1977, That’s when I started. And then you come back Ended 1978.

And you are an Aquarius, is that the position?

Yep, Aquarius. And what did an Aquarius do?

I was responsible for the fish in the gallery four, which was native freshwater stuff. Interestingly enough, beyond the trout and minnows and bass, we had, I also had penguins in my exhibit. We had four Humboldt penguins in an enclosure that was not as big as this dining room. And it was interesting. Another quick aside, when I was about fourth grade, I remember reading the book, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, I dunno if you’re familiar with that at all. But Mr. Popper gets the house, a number of a penguins in the local zoo in his house, like in his bathtub bar. I don’t remember. And I remember after being a kid reading this, I’m like, someday I’m gonna have penguins.

They’ll sound so cool. So I get this job at Shedd aquarium, all of a sudden I’ve got penguins. And I found out in short order, they’re just big stinky birds. And when you’re cleaning the exhibit, if you get ’em into a corner, they’ll peck you. And boy, they cause so many blood blisters in the back of my calves. ’cause you’re, they’re, they felt threatened and that’s how they defend themselves. So when I, as I approach the exhibit in the morning to clean, I would start singing to them so they knew I was coming and they wouldn’t freak out. But that was that.

And we had an alligator snapping turtle, which was not part of the Midwest big alligator snapping turtle. And other than that it was pretty much native fish. So what I was responsible for is obviously keeping the fish in a good healthy state, but also cleaning the exhibits and cleaning the floors at the back of the gallery every Friday afternoon. So it was a glorified maintenance job. Back in the day, aqua were called tank men, which was a very derogatory term when I started working there. Some people still used it, but it was, I loved it. I mean, within a week I realized, wow, this is so cool. I get to do this. And you know, I was much more physically able to like, jump up on a top of a tank and climb into one if I had to type of thing.

And the other thing is, I knew most of these fish, I’m from the Midwest, I’m familiar with these guys. These are my friends. So it was a, it was a nice beginning.

And in the beginning, did you have to interview for your job or did they just automatically take you back?

Or in the beginning, did you have to interview?

Yeah, that was an interesting prospect. I interviewed three times with the curator of fishes, and the third time I’m back, he says, well, we’re prepared to give you the position. And he leaned back in his chair and he says, but we have one thing. He says, we have a dress code.

As he leans back in his old work jeans and a flannel shirt, I’m thinking, what could the dress code possibly be?

He says, the director does not allow facial hair. And I had a full beard at the time and I, I dunno if I actually said these words, but I said, man, I’m so anxious to get this job. I’ll shave my head if you want me to.

So the beard went and I got the job after three interviews. So Who was the curator?

Don Zumwalt. He was from California, I believe. And I know that when I left to go to California myself, where the fish farm operation, he too left the aquaquarium. And when I came back, it was Roger Ick, who was a curator, and Roger’s the one that welcomed me back.

What was the aquarium like when you started?

What was the collection like?

Fairly bare bones. You know, I’m, I’m thinking the tanks, as we call ’em now, call ’em exhibits or habitats. But they were, you know, very austere decorations were stacked rocks, you know, maybe a flower pot for the sick of the hide in type of thing. Not, not much above what a home of course could do. And probably not as good as the best home Aquarius could do in a smaller exhibit. We didn’t have the diversity of animals that we have now. Certainly not the number of species, but invertebrates were kind of an afterthought if you had them at all. I was very pleased.

I had what’s called a fish eating decoy muscle, and it was difficult to keep them alive, but that was a cool invertebrate. In subsequent years, we developed a standing exhibit within one of the galleries to highlight invertebrates. Then we also developed a coral and a exhibit within a another gallery. So the, the collection grew. But when I started there, it was pretty bare bones, not, not a lot of sophisticated equipment. We depended on the gravity tank for circulation, which meant water eventually was pumped to tanks above the public space and flowed by gravity down to the exhibit and reserve tanks. That’s thus the name gravity tanks. The salt water that we used at that time was a recipe that Roger had developed.

But the salt water recipe had gone through several iterations before we got to the one when I started the life support equipment was real basic and didn’t have anything more than what we call mixed media filters, which is six. You start out with gravel and you work up to finer and finer material to get a stack that has sand at the top. So as I said, we, you pump the water in the top of the filter and as the water flowed down by gravity and out the bottom, it’s taken out the chunks, if you will, on eating food or whatnot. But it didn’t filter out, you know, parasites or anything. We had no ultraviolet light, nothing that would kill parasites. And it was very, very basic. It was, I’m, I’m sure a bit more advanced than when the, a corn first opened in 1930, but probably not much above that. So.

And did you have any concerns when you started working at the aquarium?

Not really. Other than the, the part about, you know, having to clean the floors was a pain in the neck. And I actually serviced a gallery at a half, but I just took it in stride. I was always a kid that was like, Hey, whatever it takes, you know, let me know what I gotta do. I didn’t push back about that. I, I, I thought, well, this is how they operated. And all the other course they have to do the same thing in their area. The one thing that that bothered me and turned 180 in subsequent years was we were not meant to be really seen out in the public space. You know, you, you got plenty of work behind the scenes, make sure you get your job done.

One time I was out there and I remember I had just set up an exhibit and I’m looking at the exhibit, you know, as it’s filling up with water, seeing how it looks.

And the effectively assistant curator came up to me, he’s like, what are you doing out here?

I said, I’m just created this tank, you know, I’m checking it out, make sure everything’s good. He goes, get in the back and clean your area like that. That’s how it was said. I’m like, wow. Subsequent years. We encouraged Aquarius to come out into their galleries and mingle with the guests and answer their questions, maybe tell them cool stories about various animals. So it turned 180 and I remember one Aquarius who was just like very shy and like, I, I, I can’t do that. I said, come on Jim, you, you, you can do it. You’ll be all right. You, you know much more than these people out here just, you know, take it slow within a month or two. He’s like, oh man, I can’t wait to get out there.

He loved it and he realized that I got a lot to share and he was very much into that whole aspect of the job.

So What was the structure of the staff?

You had a boss that was the curator and then they had, what was the starting structure?

Very simple. There was a curator and then the assistant creator curator was kind of that in responsibility only. Didn’t really have that term. Matter of fact, the guy that was the assistant curator was a man in charge of the coral reef tank in the diving program. So, but he was also responsible for overseeing the entire fish staff and making sure we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. So you could say effectively curator, assistant, curator. But then there were aquas, and I’m trying to remember, I’m not sure if we even had senior aquas at that time. You were saltwater or you were a freshwater aqua in time. We got to have, you know, promotions and different levels of pay as you advanced and your knowledge base increased to the point that, gosh, we have, we have someone in charge of live food culture.

It’s like, we never even did that when I started. And now it’s an actual full-time job with a staff of, I bet probably half dozen people. It’s a big part of their operations. So it was, it’s much simpler back then. I also remember on the mezzanine level, we had bins, large bins divided by small wooden walls of rocks. Different type of rocks was the rock pile. So when you’re doing a new exhibit, you went down and you got certain kind of rocks and you brought ’em up to the main floor and set up your aquarium and hopefully put some plants in there or something. But it was pretty basic.

And about the curator was Assistant director?

Yeah. Of the whole aquarium. And then the director of the aquarium now referred to as a president slash ceo Who was the assistant director when you started Lou Reimers. Lou Reimers often seen with a cigar in his mouth in his office. He was there forever. I’m not sure when he first started. I think he might’ve been there when the aquarium opened or shortly after. And to show you how simple things were. I remember when I eventually got up to assistant curator of Fishes, he would often call me in his office and he had his little booklet he’d open, he goes, all right, Robinette, let’s do attendance. Who’s here today? You know, we check off da da da da.

And he come down to Jim Robinette, oh, he’s not here. Ha ha ha. I’m like, funny guy. He was a nice guy. Not overly knowledgeable. I mean, I, I think he may have come in through our janitorial staff. So, you know, as far as knowledge about keeping animals or husbandry, not real strong in that regard. The director was Bill Breaker when I came on, and Bill had actually started as an Aquarius and quickly became curator and then assistant director of the facility. So, but it was really bare bones. As a young Aquarius.

Aquarius, did you have contact with the director and at that senior level or not?

It’s like, only when you’re in trouble.

I remember if Bill Breaker ran into me one time, and I think it was assistant curator, he’s like, where’s everybody?

I’ve been looking all around behind the scenes, I can’t find one Aquarius. I’m like, I’m not sure. I mean, they must be behind the scenes. They’re working somewhere. Maybe they’re in a meeting, goes, geez, you know, make sure those people do their jobs. So as an Aquarius, as even assistant curator of Phishes, I did not have a lot of contact with them. However, it was, the contact did come when I would be sitting in the curator’s office, Roger ick. And you know, we’d be developing plans for the collection and we used to kid around about scientific names and their pronunciations because we’d often differ on their pronunciation. And then Bill Breaker would wander down the hall and sit in with us.

And he enjoyed sitting at our company and he knew the scientific names as well as we did. He was very proud of that. And so I kind of got to know him first at that level where we could just sit and chat. But it was always like, oh, Mr. Break’s coming, you know, type of thing. He, he was a pretty strict guy, bill Breaker. So, you know, he had to make sure everything was in line. And he met weekly with a curatorial staff.

But it wasn’t until I became curator of marine mammals that I got to sit at the big table.

And this, the workforce when you started was five people, 25 people, only men?

Yeah. Pretty much only men in the fish’s department. And I would guess, I don’t know, 10 people, something like that. There were six galleries and there were six people responsible for the galleries, and then two guys responsible for the tributaries. Former balanced from the small Asian motif area. The, the assistant curator oversaw the reef tank and the diving operations there. And that was pretty much it. There was no live food culture, so we didn’t have that aspect of it. We didn’t have special exhibits at that time, so there was nobody dedicated to that.

When we started building special exhibits with live animals, we had a, a team of aqua that had to facilitate the care and the setting up of the fishes environments. So that was probably, I’d say probably six people and special exhibits alone. So.

And was there any exper, well the other question, were there any special animals at that time that were unique?

Chico? The River Dolphin was very unique. He was at the end of Gallery five, and it would’ve been probably about 20,000 gallons of water. We also had a, my gallery, this large alligator snapping turtle, which they’re not found as far north as Chicago, but they, they’re found in southern Illinois. My, one of my first exposures to that was I’m, I’m brand new and I’m told by the assistant curator, we gotta take the snapping turtle out of that exhibit and get him to eat.

He’s not eating. And I’m like, how do we do that?

The animal weight, as I recall, 230 pounds, it was the shell was like this, just huge. The head was about basketball size and we took four of us and carefully got em outta the exhibit. ’cause they can extend their neck pretty far and easily snap off a finger if he got it caught in their jaw. So we had him on the floor in the back area. The guys in the know were trying to pry his mouth open with a broomstick just so they could hold it open and shove a fish in this mouth. And this animal is having none of this. And so this is going on for like 20 minutes. And finally my anthropomorphic sense says the animal got ticked off and he whipped his head around and snapped that broomstick in half, like it was breaking a matchstick.

I was like, whoa. That’s what I learned about care and taking care of that animal and how to feed it and everything beyond that. Way back before my time, we actually had a tursi ops, a bottle mills dolphin at the end of gallery one, which in retrospect was way too small in exhibit space. We also had a manatee at one time, which was way too small back in those days. It was more, let’s show the curious kind of a Barnum and Bailey attitude and you know, as long as the animal has enough water to float in and he’s eating, it’s gonna be fine.

Were there any experiences then when you started that changed your notion of what an aquaquarium should be?

You know, I probably not in a major way, because I was so new to the aquarium, I, again, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to aquariums in a, you know, my developing years or anything. And when I saw Shedd aquarium, it was kind of like, wow, you know, this is pretty cool. You know, and seeing animals that I was familiar with as a kid. It, it was, you know, as I, as I grew in the community, obviously you get exposed to all levels of aquariums and everything, but I think again, aquariums are a really beneficial component to a a, a community. And I think, you know, if nothing else, based on peer pressure, every new aquarium’s gotta be bigger and better than the ones before it. Certainly, that was the attitude when we built the oceanarium. We gotta be bigger than anybody else. We’ve gotta be the best.

I remember touring an individual from Disney, and you’re familiar with their animatronics through all their, the animal kingdom or the, what do you call it?

The magic kingdom. And I’m walking this individual down the north stairs of the Oceanarium. And at the bottom there was a tide pool exhibit, and above it was a tree with an eagle and a nest. And the wings were spread like this. And before we got to the bottom of the stairs, he’s like, man, this is great. You guys did such a good job replicating, you know, the Pacific Northwest coast. He goes, but one thing he says, you gotta get that eagle to move. You gotta get animatronics. He said, yeah, if we had another $50,000, by that time, money was pretty tight.

We’d blown the treasury on the oceanarium and we never did get animatronics.

At this time, as you’re doing your job and starting out, at what point did you know that you wanted to do more than be an Aquarius?

And how did you think you might achieve it?

You know, at the time, advancement in the early days happened pretty quickly for me, just because positions opened and I expressed interest. So I was not an Aquarius for that long. I’m trying to think, I think it was 1980 that I might have moved to the lab. And I had come back to the aquarium from California at the end of November of 1978. So I wasn’t an Aquarius for a long time, enough to get exposure and everything. But then the lab position opened and I thought, hmm, you know, I know something about that. I know water chemistry and I know disease analysis also had to make up a batch of salt water as needed in the lab, which was crazy. But I, I applied for it and I got that job.

And the lab at that time was a one person operation, one big room. The water testing was very simple, very, I mean, we did a number of parameters, but nothing as far as sophisticated equipment disease analysis was often kind of hit and miss. There wasn’t a lot of knowledge, you know, I mean, I knew parasites, familiar with several virulent bacteria, but nothing on viruses. We had no ability to culture viruses. And it was, it was just very rudimentary. And, you know, you did the best you can. And there’s, there’s common things like iic I theus the white spot disease you see on fishes that is easily recognized and easily treatable. But, you know, there was a, a limited number of successes we had when we had a, certainly had an exotic disease pop up that we don’t know, you know, maybe calling the veterinarian like, well, the veterinarian doesn’t really know what that is.

They’re not familiar with that either. So the aquatic veterinary medicine world was way behind zoo and terrestrial animal at that time. And then I just have to share with you the salt water, we would make it up, we had a reservoir of a hundred thousand gallons. So you fill the reservoir, the a hundred thousand gallons of fresh water. And then I think, think at the time the recipe called for, it was probably 20 some different salts that had to be poured into this mixing reservoir about probably a four foot cube and maybe two or three feet deep. And as you poured in the salt, there was turbulence and would help dissolve the salts and they would eventually spill over into the reservoir. The, the major component of our salt water and of ocean water for that matter is sodium chloride, table salt. It went into the tune of 23,000 pounds put in by probably 50 pound sacks.

Some of ’em were 80 pound, but I think the sodium chloride was 50 pound. So you bring it up to the lip of the mixing VA cut the top and pour it in. It was a three day operation, if you’re lucky. And I remember at the end of making my first batch, I went up to the curator and I said, Strem chloride, rubidium chloride, the amount you’re telling me to put in is not even a tablespoon. Are you sure we need this? He goes, yeah, yeah, put it in there. It’s good for some invertebrates. You know, they need it. And I’m like, all right. You know, it doesn’t hurt. But it was just crazy yeoman’s work, trying to make a batch of salt saltwater.

Nowadays it’s much simpler. We buy a premix and that’s commercially available and it works great.

Now, was this position as lab manager a step up?

Yes. Yeah, it was considered a step up. You had oversight of all the animals in the aquaquarium and their potential diseases or whatever. They’re not feeling well, you know, most Aquarius had a good working knowledge because most of ’em came from a home aquarium background. So they’re familiar with some of the common parasites. You know, they might come to me and say, Hey, I think I’ve got IC and number 67. I would have to go and look at it like, oh yeah, yeah, you’re right, I’ll get you some ade green and you know, we’ll pour it in with formaldehyde at this dose for this many days and da da da, turn the tank off circulation and just circulate it within itself. It, it, it, it was not a managerial level position, but it was a step up from being an Aquarius. Now you do this for a short amount of time Yes.

As that. Yep. And then in 81 you become assistant curator.

Right. Why?

So short a position as lab manager and what is this new position?

How do you get it, The position to open?

Again, I was fortunate right place. And I knew the curator very well. He knew my abilities. He also was big into fish disease analysis.

So often I would say it was Roger ick and I would say, Hey Raj, you know, could you meet me at Gallery three?

I want you to look at this with me. Or sometimes if I was performing a necropsy, you know, under the microscope, I said, I think I got this. I just want you to look at it too and see if you feel that’s what we’re dealing with. So it was, you know, it was more of a team effort, but it was, you know, it was something that we did the best we could at that time. I remember Chico would get bacterial infection sometimes. And fortunately we were able to call in Lincoln Park Zoos veterinarian, have him come over, he could assess what it was, give us an antibiotic, and it would be remedied within seven to 10 days.

So you had, you had a part-time vet, or you had no vet?

We had no onsite vet at the, at all. Dr. Eric Ashkin was our first veterinarian. Barbara Baker would come over with, oh my gosh, Tom Mein.

We had other, other individuals that would come through, but it was always like, we have to call up Lincoln Park Zoo and see can we get ’em over here?

You know, Tuesday afternoon, whatever. I think in, in time we set up an agreement that they would come on a regular basis if nothing else, to just to assess the collection. Now did you have to interview for this assistant curator position? Yeah, Yeah. And I was in a serious competition with a guy that was a good friend of mine.

And I remember we had interviewed and he’d come up to me like, Jimmy, I don’t know why, why aren’t they doing something?

You know, I really hope I can get this job. And you know, I’m thinking, well, me too, man, but you know, he’s gonna make the choice that he thinks would be best. And so I got the position, the other guy ended up leaving and going to SeaWorld, ended up coming back to she Aquarium. But I was lucky enough to get the assistant curator job, which I loved it because it just opened windows to me. I got to lead collecting trips on the She Aquarium’s boat, for instance, including oversight of the lab and all the animal collection. So it was definitely, you know, elevation and pay, but also in responsibility. So how many people were now working under you as assistant curator? Mm, Let’s see. We had probably grown by that.

Well, we were then, gosh, that would’ve been the early eighties. We were building what we called that little invertebrate module and also the, it was actually called the, an amenity exhibit. It had an amenities and quarrels. So I think the number might’ve soared to like 15, maybe 18 people type of thing.

It wasn’t a huge department. But How did they accept you as the new boss?

Great question. For the most part, very well, my approach was, you know, I realized, you know, I’m the boss. You can’t be everybody’s friend, but try to work with them and, you know, realize their expertise.

You know, ask them what do they think about this?

You know, how do you feel about this?

But I remember being on the stern deck of the coral reef, the first qua boat, and just having this talk with the other CO that were there. I said, you know, I know this is kind of awkward ’cause you know, I’m one of you guys, but now I’m your boss. And so I’m just hoping, you know, we can work together real well. And you know, if you have any challenges, you know, come and talk to me. You know, let’s keep an open door. And it’s one guy’s like, no, no way, man. No way. I’m not gonna do it. I’m like, why not? I don’t know. He probably didn’t respect me.

Whatever might have thought he should have had the position. He was one of those individuals that pretty much knew everything there was to know, but not in a literal sense. But I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, I hope this guy leaves at some point because he’s just gonna be a burr under the saddle. And it, it turns out that he did leave and it was, he got a, a good position. And I’m like, whew, good. That makes my job easier. I’m not, I didn’t see myself winning him over.

Did you have mentors at this time?

Not formally. I, I often worked with the curator, Roger, and he and I would exchange ideas. We both had biology degrees, we both were home hobbyists. Nobody outside the she Aquarium at that time. ’cause I was just because coming into my own, I’m trying to think, I think the first annual meeting I attended was, I wanna say it was 1982, it was in New Orleans, whatever year that was. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a whole level bigger than what I’m used to and all these people that I heard about, you know, and now I’m getting to meet them and work with them. And it was kind of like, I gotta share a bit overwhelming. At first I thought, oh my gosh, I gotta really up my game here. You know, you got some people that are pretty sharp here and know a lot more than I do.

But I’ve always loved learning and I still do. And it’s, to me, it’s like, don’t be the big shop, know it all type of guy. Be receptive to other people’s input and you know, take it with a grain of salt if that’s what it’s worth. Or, you know, incorporate it into your regular responsibilities.

So other than, like I say in-House, nobody really helped you to mentor me As an assistant curator, how did you affect the development of the sections of the aquarium you were responsible for?

It was often working as a team. We would discuss things at our weekly Aquarius meeting and you know, something like these within the gallery, standing freestanding exhibits were something that were kind of a, a collective thought. And then somebody would say, oh my gosh, I would love to work on the an amenity exhibit. I, I love an, I know a little bit more about ’em, da da da da da. And we would, you know, encourage that person, help ’em along, make it happen. And it, it, it was, it was pretty much more a team effort in generating that. Now not everybody participated, you know, if we had some freshwater guys that really didn’t have a lot of familiarity with a saltwater exhibit, they probably wouldn’t pipe up. But it was more of a team approach.

When we’re looking at increasing the exhibitry or bringing in new animals or whatever the nice thing it was, there was always a good receptivity to new ideas. There was never a situation where you’d be like, oh, come on, that’s not gonna work. You know, I was like, well, let’s talk through it, you know, see if we can make this happen or not. So it was good.

During this time as the assistant curator, any memorable events?

I assume animals didn’t escape in an aquarium, but any VIP visits or things that were unique, I remember touring around LE’s wife one time found out she doesn’t speak a word of English, so that was kind of like pointing and showing this and that. But I’m like, oh my gosh, this is pretty impressive. This person, you know, it was one of my first exposures to somebody of that stature. One of the crazy things, and this is just an isolated inter event, we used to have a PA system around the back, and I remember I was in my office and I hear this all Aquarius report to Gallery six. Immediately I’m like, oh man, that’s not good when you call all Aquarius. And we had era pimas that are, they get up to 10 feet long. They used to, anyway, they’re over fish, but ours were probably five to six feet long and they’re jumpers. And so they not only cleared the little boards, the jump boards, we call them at the surface level of the pool, but boom, landed on the floor and their heads are really hard.

So it didn’t seem to hurt the animal. But get up there and nears is like six foot animal kind of slithering down the floor and like, oh my god, you know, like hopefully it’s gonna live type of thing.

We ended up just scooping it up with a long, what do you call it?

Transport, not a net, but a stretcher and getting it into the aquarium and then what we call wa walking it, which meant put its mouth at a water ette to force water over its gills and bathe the gills and get ’em back to to speed. It was an interesting event. We were very, very fortunate we didn’t lose anything. And you know, a good team effort. Even the saltwater guys were over there to help. Another crazy thing and talk about the evolution, when we would get a truckload of salt, it would mean the whole team had to go and help. Matter of fact, the Aquarius department is what we were called. Any large scale job that was, that came up in the aquarium.

We were the guys that had to go and take care of it because we had the most people and we had the, the numbers of strong guys type of thing. So yeah, nothing really obvious, real glaring. One disappointing thing, I remember I was actually, this is predates my assistant curatorship, but I wanted to do a study of Chico and I would stay after work and at night when the lights would go down, he would rest, which meant he would sink to the bottom and just lay there for 20 minutes. That’s what I recorded. And then he’d slowly come to the surface, take a breath or two, and then kind of float back down. And after early into the study, the animal died and I’m like, ugh. Number one, it was a favorite animal of everyone and it was a real heartbreak to lose it. But end of my research. So Now in 85 you become the curator of marine mammals.

Yeah. So you are promoted. Did you, did someone retire?

How did you get the job? Did you have to interview?

Yeah, it was a new position because we used to have a little auditorium and I remember Bill Breaker calling the staff into this little auditorium. I think our, the entire entire aquarium staff might have been 75 people. And he announced that after years of wrangling with the board and da da da, we are going to move forward with this oceanarium exhibit. And we’re all like, wow. And he, he described it, it wasn’t even, didn’t have a final design for it yet, but we’re going to proceed with it. And I remember approaching Bill Breaker and David Lonsdale, the assistant director at that time, and saying, you know, I’ve got a, an advocation, you know, I’d love marine mammals. I read about ’em all the time, you know, I would like to be considered for this position. And I also thought, eh, Roger EK’s only a few years older than me, he’s not going anywhere, so chance for advancement aren’t gonna happen much.

And so I told him I was interested and I applied and there wasn’t really a, an in-depth interview process, it was, I was actually assigned acting curator. And so Breaker would tell me PR primarily start researching these animals and what’s required for the permit applications. I was responsible for writing the permit applications Breaker would read through ’em, you know, I’d explain if there was any questions and he would be the one to sign off before we sent it in. So doing a good job, I guess as acting curator, he said, okay, you’re our official curator the following year and you know, full speed ahead. So that’s how it came about. Pretty simply, again, right place, right time. Got lucky.

And what were your new responsibilities?

Well there, initially it was to do library research on surveys of the marine mammals, primarily at this time the beluga whales and a white sided dolphins, because part of the permit application had you define the size of the population from which you hoped to take the animals. So if the population in the wild was 10 animals, you’re not gonna be able to go in there and take eight animals off the coast of California. There’s two intermingling populations of white sided dolphins. And I think the numbers back then were in the tens of thousands. So our taking eight animals could have happened if they died that there’s natural attrition. So, you know, basically producing those numbers, obviously showing your sources and, you know, writing the permit became familiar with USDA regulations as far as defining the size of the exhibits because when it came to brass tacks with creating the exhibit shapes and everything, I’d be the one to say, okay, you know, we need to make this exhibit this deep. For this animal group. We had put in the, they call it an MHD minimum horizontal dimension, which was simply the diameter of a circle.

So depending on the average adult length of, say a beluga whale, that would dictate how big that diameter had to be. You had to be able to inscribe a circle that big within the outline of the exhibit. So you had to meet that lowest can comment denominator volume of tank was another one and surface area. So it’s, it’s, it was just kind of doing your homework and finding out what’s out there and what further do we need to do. Then of course it got down to visiting other facilities, seeing what they do.

I remember you probably remember Ed CRA from Brookfield, and so he was probably one of the most important people when it came to visiting him and like, how do you do this?

And what’s your experience with that?

I remember him telling me, when you get down to stainless steel, the contractor’s gonna tell you 3 0 4 grade stainless. He goes, don’t take that 3 0 4, it’s no good. You gotta go three 16. I’m like, I knew nothing about that. He says, come here, I’m gonna show you something. They had a, a ladder on the outside of the dolphin tank that he said, this is a replacement for the one that pretty much dissolved within a year because it was 3 0 4 stainless steel. So it was, it was important that way. Kitchen facility, I remember going to eat at Bob Chin’s restaurant up in Wheeling and my, my rather brash brother-in-Law at the time, I was telling him about the kitchen and what we’re looking at, how we’re designing it, you know. And he says, I said, boy, I wonder what their kitchen looks like here at Bob Shin’s.

It’s a big restaurant, you know, big volume. He goes, oh, I know Bobby, I know Bobby I’ll, I’ll call him out when he comes out to work the tables, sure enough, Bob Shin comes out, he’s about 30 feet away. He is like, Hey Bobby, Bobby, come over here, come over here. I’m like, I’m embarrassed. To heck, Bob Shin was so gracious, he sat and talked for a few minutes. He goes, come on, come on, take you in the kitchen, I’m gonna show you. I was so grateful for that. And he showed me, you know, various util utilitarian things that they did in their kitchen that we would need to apply on ours.

And you know, it’s just kind of chants sometimes, sometimes targeted as far as asking people, how does this work?

Watertight gates to a person. I’m sure people said there is no such thing, they all leak, but you wanna minimize the loss, obviously. And that was very important in us dividing tanks with watertight gates and you know, there were times we would have to drain one tank but didn’t want the other one to flow into it. So the gates leaked, but it was nominal and it was, you know, that kind of thing. I think that really was crucial to the early days of the Oceanarium.

How many staff reported to you or were you alone?

I was alone initially, and then Ken Ramirez was a first staff member and that was a chance occurrence, and I’ll save you the whole story, but I went to attend a marine mammal meeting in San Antonio and a side trip after meeting was in Galveston, Texas where he worked and we took a bus back and forth and on the bus ride back, he and I sat next to each other and I started to tell him about this oceanarium exhibit we’re building and he expressed interest and about three days later, maybe a week long letter, I’m very interested in this assistant curator position and all his, you know, qualifications. And I’m like, wow, Ken Ramirez, that’d be great. You know, I knew basically of his experience training. So it was Ken and I for a while. And then we needed a few Aquarius when we started acquiring animals. I think the, for a while we were capped at like eight individuals. Eventually it grew to probably 20 and then it, it grew from there. So it was very humble beginnings.

Our office was the old department in the chat aquarium till it disappeared. Just take a side note, tell me about the history of the apartment that you just mentioned. The apartment was part of the original design of the aquarium. It was on the mezzanine or the middle level of the aquarium. And the first, not acting director, but real director, Walter Chu used to live in that apartment, which was interesting. It had like a, a bedroom, I think a dining area, kind of a little living room, you know, in her bathroom. And among other things, he also raised dogs at the aquarium. He had kennels that he set up outside what was the lab.

So he was there full-time and it was used for him, his purposes, I’m not sure when eventually he vacated it, but it’s had empty for years and years. Both like the hallowed ground. And a few people did talk about some events that might have happened within the apartment. Very few people had keys. I’m not sure how many had, I did not have a key until it was our office, but it, it sat largely unoccupied. I remember we had a executive director from the Venezuelans who an aquarium community come to visit us and we put her up in there, very austere accommodations for her, but she was very good about it. And she followed us around, you know, for a week.

And I remember when it was time to take her, I guess, to the airport, I said, Esmeralda, how everything, okay, you know, how was the apartment?

She goes, oh yeah, yeah, it was good, it was good, but, but no hot water in the shower.

I’m like, oh my gosh, are you kidding me?

Turns out the hot water valve had been turned off and nobody knew and she never brought it up. So other than that it was unoccupied for the longest time. And then when our marine mammal department grew, outgrew the little office space we had, I remember Bill breaker burst into my office one day. He goes, Jim, come with me just like that.

I’m like, geez, what’s going on?

And he opens up the apartment, he goes, how would this be?

I’m like, for what? He goes for your new office.

I like, wow, really?

And so we moved in there bare bones, man, I mean a couple desks, some chairs, nothing special. But that’s where he kept our records and that’s where he convened. And after we moved into the ocean area, sat empty. And then eventually when the oceanarium was completely built, there was a stairwell that ended up going right through what was the apartment. So that was the end of it. So you had a number of people working for you.

How would you think that they would describe your management style?

I think pretty much hands off, meaning I wasn’t micromanaging them. And that was something that I was very cognizant of. I did not want to do that. I didn’t have the expertise in all the areas like I was a freshwater quast. I mean, you know, over time you get to learn more and more salt water. But it came to, you know, I would like to approach people and ask them what their issues were and you know, help me out.

What do you, what do you mean you’ll familiarize me?

Teach me. So I, I tried to make it as comfortable, tried to accommodate them, tried to help them if they needed resources. And not everything is guaranteed as you know, but try and, you know, bring it up to the higher powers and say, you know, they’re asking for this and that and here’s why it’s important. And the purse, purse strings were pretty tight based on the director’s style at that time. But if you could make a good case and say this is how it’s gonna improve this aspect of our operations, you’d be given it. Its blessing.

And based on your new position, did your relationship with the director change how?

Yeah, well it was a regular participant in the curator’s meeting because that was his focus. The oceanarium, we had regular meetings, you know, sometimes he’d ask me, you know, about specific animal groups and who we were talking to about collecting and about, you know, veterinarians that might be available to work with us. I really, really enjoyed it because it’s kind of like I had earned the respect of the director and you know, he often came to me with questions that, because I was so involved with it, I could help him with, he was also presenting the Oceanarium plans initially to a number of groups. Chicago Park District, the state of Illinois. I, I think he identified like nine different groups he had to go and give the dog and pony show to, but he had to win approval of all these groups before we could get the go ahead to proceed with construction. So I really enjoyed that aspect of it. But I have to share one that really tried our relationship. We had a veterinarian, Dave Casper, there was a first in-house veterinarian, and he had come from California, but he had actually grown up in Mount Prospect as it turns out.

And Ken Ramirez and I, and we sat down and we’re looking at the pool design and talking about the animal collection and how we’re gonna manage them. Like if we had to move animals around, we had set it up. So there were four interconnected pools and we had great flexibility in moving animals in whatever direction we needed to.

But if we got the animals, we had yet yet to acquire the false killer whales, it’s like, ah, how is that gonna work?

If we have baby belugas and baby dolphins, where are the false killer whales gonna go?

We realize that we’re gonna be in a pinch. And by the way, the false killer whales could prey on the young dolphins or whales, not outta the realm of possibility. So we, the three of us said, you know what, I don’t, I don’t think we should pursue getting false killer whales. And I had a good idea. Well, who’s gonna tell Mr. Breaker like you, you’re the curator. I’m like, oh, great. So I realized, yeah, I’m the guy. So I call him up and I said, Hey Bill, you know you got time. Can we come up and talk to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Come on up. So we each grabbed a chair and I swear his chair was elevated so that he was always looking down on you like the Wizard of Oz. His office was like that as well. He had a long entry away before he get to the desk. And I laid out the thing and I said, you know, we had the permit application in, but because of this and that, we decided that we don’t think it’s in our best interest to pursue the false killer wells. God dammit, now everybody’s against me. Those were his words and that was his reaction to things that were surprising to him. And I said, no, no, no, here’s the reason why. And he listened to us and he’s like, eh, okay.

I’m sure it killed him. I’m sure he just like, he says, but we’re gonna pursue the permit. We’re gonna get the permit. We just will not exercise the permit.

And that’s what we did. He was concerned that if we did not pursue the permit, the animal rights activists would say, aha, victory, they’re dropping out of the false killer whale game, you know?

And we said, no, it’s just we have it and we’re just not gonna pursue it at this time.

And we never did. And the permit expired. So Now at, at this time in this new position, were you starting to develop any new philosophies about exhibit design and developing a collection?

You know, bigger is always better type of thing. And with the oceanarium, I, I was quite satisfied with the size of the exhibits and the spaces we had. And at that point, you know, I was all marine mammals all the time with the fishes. We were getting more into, let’s try in, in some small applications, make a bigger exhibit. For instance, we would have four, 400 gallon aquariums in a row, which are more vertically oriented. So it was tough, you know, there’s not a lot of horizontal, normal swimming patterns for fishes, so let’s knock out those three walls in between and make one large exhibit. And by the way, let’s put in some cool plants with it and maybe some terrestrial stuff as well. That was kind of the humble beginnings of the Amazon, which would, what would become the Amazon.

And it was, it was a lot of fun for us because number one, we saw the benefit of more space for the animals, the fishes to swim in. And man, this looks pretty cool. We had a guy that was just fantastic with plants and he’d get this thing planted up so beautifully. It, it looked so good. And you know, eventually we put small animals up in the terrestrial portion and I think, you know, that was pretty much the direction. Most newer aquariums were going in anyway, trying to do the more habitat representation as opposed to just the aquatic or just at the terrestrial. So that was, I’d say the beginning. And that was then, I’d say that was the philosophy going forward.

Certainly when we did the, the wild reef exhibit had the large, we call the shark exhibit and it’s got some very neat animals in there. But you know, with sharks, and we had a sawfish in there, they need space. They need a lot of space. And by the way, we’re gonna put some little guys in too.

Well, how do you know they’re not gonna get picked off by the sharks?

Well that’s because we are creating hiding places for them. And we set the tank up, you got the water up, you got the water chemistry good, you’d introduced the little guys first. So they get to know where to hide and then eventually the sharks go in. And not to say there wasn’t any predation, but you definitely minimized it with that approach. So it, it came to like, yeah, we need to look at designing bigger exhibits and probably fewer animals. And that is definitely the direction. Now Were you responsible for the purchasing of food stuffs, equipment, animals? Yeah.

Yeah. Everything for this exhibit?

Yes. Yes. Are you speaking of the Oceanarium exhibit?

Yes, yes. It started when I was assistant curator of fishes where one of my responsibilities was, for instance, oiling the fish. And I have to admit, I was pretty shy about colon these vendors up there I didn’t know anything about. And, you know, asking, you know, for best price and doing price comparison and everything. And after a while I realized, oh, this is easy. And I got into it. I, I went 180, I like, you know, I kind of dicker with people a little bit and you know, some people do that naturally. It was kind of like a learning curve for me. And it was tested one time we worked with pick Fisheries, which was a local fishery purveyor in Chicago. Had been with the aquarium probably since its beginning.

And they were sending us a product that was less than desirable. We’d get boxes of smelt and it’d be freezer burned, meaning it was dried and kind of crinkled. It was freezer, you know, the animal tissues. It shrunk. I think their attitude was, I got to fish, eat anything, you know, just give them this stuff.

And I got to a point where I started rejecting shipments and finally the head of pick fisheries calls Bill Breaker and says, Hey, what the heck’s going on over there?

Your guy keeps rejecting the fishes. So again, I get called up to the, the Wizard of Oz’s office.

It’s like, Jim, what’s going on with this?

You know, and well, Mr. Breaker, da da da da da. And you know, and you can tell it’s bad ’cause a fish even are not eating it. And when he put it in the water, it floats which good, healthy, you know, fresh fish, it would sink and they’d pick it off as it goes down. He totally supported me. He goes, good, stop doing business with him. So I’m like, oh my God. You know, he trusts my opinion, made me feel very good about that. So it was, you know, with the Marine mammal, we called it the Marine Mammal Pavilion initially became the Oceanarium.

That was his focus and I was his guy. So he was sending me, first of all, one of the things he says, I want you to go to every professional marine mammal meeting and I’m going to, like I said, the Aquatic Animal vets.

And I’m like, what do I know about this?

But the, the amount I learned was overwhelming and it was just so rewarding.

And more importantly getting to know the players so I could, you know, pick up the phone and ask somebody at another facility, what have you guys done about this?

So it was, it was wonderful to gain his respect, eventual friendship and you know, it, I’m glad it way it played out.

Can you tell us about unions and how they affected the Aquarium’s development running of it?

What were the limitations and demands?

Short answer is there were no unions at Shedd aquarium. There still are no unions at Shedd aquarium. However, I’m not sure how far back this goes, but there was, there is a union that might come into chat aquarium. And it turns out I found out recently that it involves some departments that you wouldn’t really think would ask for union representation. When I shared this with our good friend, bill Breaker, he was quite upset. ’cause he feels, and I think it’s true, we, we pay a good salary, a good wage to our, our workers and we’re among the top aquarium as far as pay scale. But it was something that Bill Breaker at least, was really not interested in having come into the aquarium. There was an attempt, I wanna say probably in the eighties, union had come in and I think it was the facilities department that invited them in.

Senior management of which I was part of at that time, met about this and said, you know, we don’t want this happening here and we have to make the case to the people that are trying to bring the union in that you realize if the union comes in, you have to negotiate all the benefits you get now. Everything you get now is not guaranteed. And they’re like, oh, oh, oh. Anyway, bottom line is they decided not to bring the union in and that was that. And for many years we thought, okay, well it’s, it’s back now and it’s, it’s active. I asked a, a friend of mine at the aquarium about what’s going on. He goes, management, I don’t really know much about it. So I, I did hear from a neighbor, as a matter of fact who works for Black Club Chicago, walking the dogs.

She goes, I heard, you know, union she aquarium. I’m like, yeah, I just heard that in the news.

She goes, who do I talk to at the aquarium?

And so I’m like, ah. So anyway, I reached out to the head of marketing and sales and I said, Hey, if you don’t mind, this person’s interested in talking to you. And I gave them each email information and I know not what happened with it. I don’t know if, I bet we did not respond to Block Club Chicago, but it’s a very sensitive topic and one that I think the aquarium was pretty proud to not have any union representation in there. And I, I gotta say I was very, very pleased with the benefit package that we had. We have. And you know, I, I guess I would not have been an advocate of bringing a union in.

But Now during this time, are there any interesting of getting the animals and building the, you the curator of the marine mammals, were there any stories or interesting situations you could share?

Anything where you learned something new?

Let’s see here. I’m trying to think. There were, there were no escapes, which is a good thing. ’cause most of these animals aren’t gonna go too far. I, you know, one of their crazy things is, you know, you design the facility as best you can, you get all the input from the community. And we had to retrofit the sea ter exhibit, I would bet no more, no less than 10 times. We knew that they’re dextrous, they’re very curious.

They basically look at something like, Hey, what’s this for?

Destroy it type of thing. We had them taking the, the nuts that held down, the outflow grates on the bottom, taking those off and basically could get to the strong flow of water. There’s been examples of young harbor seals getting sucked on a drain and drowning and oh God forbid that would happen. So we had to put in these vandal proof clips and everything that would work. We had caulking between the three windows. They just, like a banana peel took it off. We, we oh to, to further deter the sea otters from trying to work on the drains. We put in big rocks and like, these will be good, these are heavy enough, they can’t move them.

They’re rolling them around like there’s no big deal. I’m like, oh my gosh. These are strong animals also. We used to provide, we still do clams and mussels, hard shelled items. After they extract the meat, they take ’em and they bang against the glass. So you can see a nice scratch line along the water line of the whole exhibit. And I’m like, oh my gosh. And you can buff it out, but you don’t wanna do that on a regular basis. But that said, okay, they only get this off exhibit where they’re not gonna damage exhibit glass.

Yeah. Other than that, some fun stuff. Volunteer divers that would be vacuuming the bottom of the 2 million gallon pool. Occasionally, if they were experienced divers and we felt confident they’re not gonna goof around with the animals, we’d let the beluga whales in with them. And the belugas are curious as heck among guys was telling me he, I’m down here vacuuming and all of a sudden I’m being pulled backward. And a beluga grabbed the vacuum hose and was pulling them around and I’m like, oh my gosh, I wish I could have done that. You know, fun stuff like that. Yeah. You know, fortunately we had no major incidents.

No, no losses or animals escaping that way. So Did you enjoy being an administrator now?

Yes and no. No, because it took me further from actual hands on work with the animals. You know, even as curator you still get in there if it’s a big thing, all, all hands on deck, you get to be part of it. But as you get further up the ladder, it’s like, no, no, no, they got enough guys. You know, you, you can oversee it, but type of thing or you know, I just have to do that myself. But you know, I, I always took a strong interest, especially in the veterinary work and I wanted to see what they were up to. And it was, it was fun to be, you know, because of my level that yes, of course you could be a hidden, here we’re gonna do some X-rays on the animals. Ultrasound on a beluga whale is a challenge ’cause they’re, they’re big round animals. But it was a neat aspect, the administrative part.

I took it upon myself to like, do your best job to keep this department running smoothly. ’cause everybody’s looking to you. You’re the guy, you know, if something goes wrong, it’s gonna come back to you. So I had no qualms, especially after I got to know the marine mammal community of picking up the phone and calling people or you know, bill Breaker would occasionally say, you know, I want you to go out to this facility and talk to ’em about whatever aspect we had concerns about.

So did the aquarium have a master plan or was it just in the director’s mind?

I think it probably just in the director’s mind with the oceanarium, you know, once he shared it, it became a, a bigger plan. His successor did roll out, let’s develop a master plan in a more formal way, which I was not a great enthusiast of the process, but I definitely saw the benefits and I figured this is a good thing and you know, kind of like, just suck it up and do your part. You know, this is for the betterment of the aquarium. So I could see the benefit and was there to play ball. But you know, back in the days, early days of the Oceanian design, it was pretty much, you know, what was happening in the director’s mind. And you, you indicated that you were able to do a lot of traveling.

Was it to learn about exhibitry or it, what was your travel involving?

Well, you know, certainly going to meetings and international meetings, going to Hong Kong for instance, you know, for a meeting. I’m like, wow, I never thought this would happen. I, other than that it was going for primarily animal acquisition or seeking permission for animal acquisition. For instance, we went to the Falkland Islands to see if we could acquire penguin eggs. The idea was that we’re going to transport the eggs, which is much easier. You could do it in a good sized cooler with them, you know, at temperature as well as protected from jarring. And we went down there and met with the, the, their government and their conservation people and then came out of it and was told no. And was told no because they said we, the Falkland Islands do not have a conservation plan yet.

We don’t know the impact of your taking these penguin eggs. I’m like, legitimate. But we’re looking for, I think it was 50 eggs and they’ve got thousands of penguin colonies in, you know, penguins in colonies. So it was kind of like, ah. So that didn’t work out. The, the way we got ’em, by the way, was I had to go out, I had to, because it was gonna be the more controversial part of it, I went out to California to acquire the dolphins, the last acquisition and the curator of fishes I sent on a nice ocean cruise where they left from South America, went to South Georgia Islands, Falkland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula. So he’s on a cruise ship and when they get off in the Antarctic Peninsula, they go and collect 60 eggs in short order and back on the ship. And that’s it. I’m like, tough trip, huh man. So it was, it was kind of interesting that way.

The, the other really fun travel opportunity for me, I went to Canada many times, but was working with the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans where they would do beluga research. And that often meant temporarily collecting and holding animals in affixing a radio transmitter to their dorsal ridge such that we could follow where they go, how deep they go, how far they travel. Just tremendously interesting to me to be able to talk to the research scientists that are there saying, okay, we need you guys to hold the animals and here’s what I’m gonna do. So in Europe, a number of times the Philippines for a dive collecting trip, just places I would never have gone on my own in my life. And tremendously rewarding for me personally. For the Oceanarium, you had to collect, acquire beluga whales.

Can you talk about that experience and what was involved?

Sure. We would work with a group called the Nanook Enterprises, which had been working with the aquarium community and I think primarily Europe, United States, maybe Hong Kong. And they could take whales as part of their subsistence hunt. So whether they want to eat ’em or they could sell ’em. And so that’s how we acquired them. And that involved when the whales in the summer would swim up, in this case the Churchill River, which ran into the Hudson Bay. We would just go out on a boat and you’d see whales commonly, and our permit dictated a certain size, which would pretty much say, you know, it’s, it’s a length age relationship. So an animal that’s seven feet, eight inches is likely a, a juvenile animal that is weaned from its mother. It’s not dependent on its mother anymore.

So we might target an animal like that and we would go alongside. And then the Inuit had to be the first one to jump out of the boat and try and reach over and grab the pectoral fins of the whale. And right after that person’s in the air, there’s like two, three, maybe four of us right afterwards trying to grab onto the tail because the tail is the sole means of propulsion. So really powerful. I mean one time, it was two of us on this and I was throwing like a fly, but they’re extremely gentle. And it’s interesting, once they seem to realize, you know, you have them in hand, they just gently lie there. You can take a tape measure and measure the animal and make sure it meets the permit requirements. And then it was just a means of putting a, we we’d use lamb wool inside a stretcher and then get ’em in the stretcher.

It had holes for the pectoral fins and then with a number of guys just lift it out of the water, not to one of the canoes, bring it into shore and then put it in their temporary holding tanks. And then when the time came, pulling them from the tanks, putting them in our exhibit, our transport containers and just take ’em out to the airport in Churchill and then flying them home or to a temporary holding facility. So it was working very closely with Inuits and Cree Indians up there. And it was fascinating to me. I’ve been up to Churchill three times. But just seeing that community and the type of people and you know, realizing, you know, polar, the bears are roaming around here, it was like, whoa, you know, new environment for me. So very cool seeing the Northern Lights.

And did you also then similarly have to deal with groups that were opposed to this?

Not up there so much. There was, I think, I’m not sure how many, I know one guy was, he had actually put on a train, a small boat and an outboard motor. And he was going to again, try and get between us and the whales and disrupt our collecting. The truth is the RCMP, Royal Canadian Monte Police were also on site all the time to make sure we’re doing everything according to Hoyle with the collection. And if these guys showed up, they’d be arrested. That the, that the fun reality that I didn’t realize until probably years later was that this individual that had come up and was gonna disrupt our operations, nobody in town would sell him gasoline for his outboard motor. So he was outta luck unless he wants to swim. But we really didn’t have any protest activity up there, which was a good thing.

We also had, as I said previously, kind of the wild west mentality when you’re up there. We had one guy with several teeth knocked out.

I’m not sure if he was a hockey player or whatever, but he’d come over here, Hey, you want us to take care of these guys for you?

And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, we’re okay. We’re okay. We got the RCMP here. But he was very willing to make sure these people didn’t disrupt our operation. So kind of interesting, you know, just a different world. Now in 1995 you get another promotion to director of animal collections.

Again, how does this promotion happen?

Do you have to interview, how does this occur?

This was a new position col instituted by the then director. A new director came on in 1994 and you know, for one reason or other he decided that he liked what I was doing and that he knew my background in fishes. And I had been in marine mammals most recently and he said, I want you to be our director of animal collections. There really wasn’t an interview process and it was pretty much on the job. He saw my performance and you know, part of it is to the connections I developed and he realized what I had done with a ZA in Washington. And you know, in getting the permits you naturally have to work with regulatory agencies. So I was a good guy for this position and there was no formal interview process. So you’re now in charge of all the curators.

How did your management style work for dealing with a much bigger group of people?

It went well in actuality. There were only two curators, one of marine mammals, one of fishes, both of whom I had a wonderful working relationship with. We met on a regular basis. I got their input. You know, I I I really lost touch with a lot of the day-to-Day activities that they were doing.

I mean, I could go to them at any time and say, Hey, what are we doing here?

You know, and again, a very healthy relationship and they were able to fill me in and, you know, come to me with special budgetary requirements or requests, excuse me. And it was, again, I was at the senior management table at that point and it, it went really well. It was a, I wouldn’t say everything is came up roses, but you know, we always have our challenges, but the working relationship went really well. And again, it was, I think keeping an open mind and an open door for sure. Matter of fact, I would tell people, you know, my door’s open if it’s closed, just knock. But you know, I wanna hear what you have to say or what your concerns are.

So, so were you now responsible for the acquisition of all animals?

Yeah, yeah. Ultimately I oversaw that when it came to marine mammals, you know, we’re pretty well set. Although in time, you know, well, I should share with you the, the first four sea otters came to us as a result of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. We had this brand new 60,000 gallon Sea Otter exhibit open and ready to go. Everything had checked out. I was calling us Fish and Wildlife probably on a weekly basis, like any progress on our permit, you know, we’re kind of ready to open the Oceanarium. Yeah, yeah. Almost there. Almost there. Oil spill occurs. Get a note from Fish and Wildlife. We are curtailing any collection of sea otters from Alaskan waters for five years. I’m like, oh my God.

So I’m thinking, okay, where else can we go?

Well, the director sent Ken Ramirez, myself up to Alaska. He says, I want you to be part of the Sea Otter rescue operation up there. Help ’em out. You know, you guys have good animal handling experience, da da da. So we ultimately worked at the Valdez facility and helped out in various operations up there. And they had a number of orphaned sea ter pups and sea ter pups are very dependent on their moms for the first six to eight months of their life. I mean, they, they’re like helpless without their mom.

So we had a number of very young pups and Terry Williams, one of the research scientists up there who was running that particular facility and happened to be a good friend, she says, as we’re getting ready to leave, she goes, how many otters do you wanna take with you?

I said, geez, I wish, you know. And I told her the situation. She goes, no, we’ve got 22 orphaned otters, we need homes for them. And that’s how we got our first four sea otters. And I was like, wow, fortuitous. And one of ’em actually Shanik was an interesting animal. It was found trapped in a fisher’s net and was underwater for they guessed like four minutes. So probably had some oxygen deprivation, some brain damage.

And I remember they saw it at the research, I mean at the rescue facility. We saw it back at the aquarium where it would have a grand mal seizures and the trainers were trained what to do for the animal when they experienced this. So the animal, I mean, you could hold him in his back legs and he’d be holding straight out as a board so rigid where his muscles, but with a, a simple application of a medication, he relaxed, he’d be tired as heck for two days, but then he’d bounce back and he’d be his normal self. So again, that facilitation of trainers working with the vet staff or acquires working with the vet staff. Very successful operations there. And good relationships. ’cause I know, you know, there can be some pretty, some eagles involved. There can be headbutting when it comes time to working with animals. Like the trainer knows the animal best.

Now I’m the veterinarian. I know what to do best. So finding that common ground and working together. So you had talked earlier about that the Shedd had a major sea going boat.

Can you give us a little, how did this come about and did you have the opportunity to use this boat?

Were you in charge as Director of collections?

And what was it used for?

First of all, the boat was used for several different operations of the She Aquarium. It was used by our conservation researchers that had work going in The Bahamas. So that, that grew in latter years. More importantly, it was used for specimen and collect collection in The Bahamas in the earlier days down in the Florida Keys. But the, the keys became a sanctuary. So unless you got special permission, you could not collect or acquire animals down there. So we would go to The Bahamas commonly probably at least once a year. And we’ve been doing this, gosh, probably since the 1930s going over there.

So it was used for animal acquisition research, but also for education. A huge education tool where students could apply for a class and actually get as part of their class a trip on the boat over The Bahamas and see environments and, you know, snorkel and a truly immersive exhibit, I mean immersive experience where I think it’s just a, a special once in a lifetime type of thing for many students. The first boat was wooden hauled, single screwed, older boat. I’m not even sure how we first acquired it. It was, it came on through us by, through Bill Breaker. And it was used for those operations, probably not for conservation research. ’cause that really wasn’t a thing back then. And I think we acquired it in like 1970 or 71.

And then we sold the boat in the late 1970s. But it was a board approved that we’re gonna build our own boat and design our own boat. And that’s where Captain John Rothschild came in. And the boat was assembled on the Aya River down in Louisiana. And John would be there all the time overseeing the construction of the boat. And then we brought it down the river across the Gulf and over to Miami where it’s kept on the Miami River. That boat is a double screw, two propellers, a slightly larger, I think the original was maybe 70 feet long. The current one’s 85 feet long.

We were able to design bigger and more, more numerous live wells to keep the animals alive during the collecting trip. Prior to shipping all the, you know, like the compressor for filling scuba tanks was upgraded twin diesel engines. It was really a nice, nice boat. It still is. It’s annually inspected by the Coast Guard. So in a large degree they’re the ones telling us, you better fix this. You gotta fix this. We’re on top of that anyway. But they normally come up with something they’re gonna find and the boat is still doing well and used on a, a regular basis by several departments.

During your time as director of animal collections, were there any major issues that came up during your tenure as Director of Collections?

You know, by that point there was just a modicum of activism, you know, that was not happy with what we’re doing, but they, they did not have the presence they once did. And I think again, the media folks realized, you know, Shedd’s doing a great job. There’s nothing here, there’s no story. So, you know, we weren’t really getting any protest activity out front and they weren’t really, the media not really, you know, investigating what’s going on at Shedd. And we were very proactive with them. When an animal was sick, for instance, or near at the end of its life, we would often reach out and say, you know what Granddad, the Australian Lungfish is like 80 years old. You know, we had no idea how long they lived, but you know, he may be checking out at some point, you know, to be silly about it, I guess. But it really facilitated the relationship we had with pretty much Select media.

We would often say, you know, you get first dibs on the story. So for instance, when we were collecting the first beluga whales, we had Bill Curtis on board from CBS and oh gosh, I lost his last name. He was a Chicago Tribune writer, bill somebody. Anyway, they were number one like, oh my God, this is special to get exclusive coverage of this. And so, you know, they were able to come on board. They were actually with us in the canoes on the water. And you know, it, I think that kind of openness of like what we do, let us show you what we do, kind of made things easier for us. And I was a hundred percent that behind that approach.

I’m like, kinda like, we have no secrets here. You know, we’re, we’re playing by government rules and we’re doing best by the animals. So yeah, nothing really majorly disruptive. I mean, things were going on an even keel, Amazon was being developed and Wild Reef came on board. And so, you know, exhibitry kept changing, expanding and it was a, a nice time. Matter of fact, I often say those were my favorite times at Shadow Corium. When I was director of animal collections, I had familiarity with the entire animal collection, which is my passion. And the people I worked with.

Good, good people, very, very confident, very compassionate people in many cases. And generally just good to work with.

Now in 2001, you have another job change as senior vice president of regulatory and external affairs, how do you get this position?

Why you do you have to interview for it?

This was one of my darkest moments at Quarium. I never saw this coming. I was loving director of animal collections position. I met with the then director.

He said, can you meet me down in bubble net, the cafeteria when it wasn’t being used by the public?

And he said, I’m gonna do some rearrangement. And he says, among other things I’m gonna make you head of, I’m not sure if it was legislative and external affairs, or it might have been legislative and regulatory affairs. The title changed a little bit, but essentially the same responsibilities. And he says, I want you to be this person. So no interview. That was it. And pretty much for me to define the position, the reason I think I got the position is because he knew of my experience in working with legislators and regulatory agencies through the marine mammal department. And he knew that I’m, I’m good in that regard. I can function in this. I mean, there were other things for the aquarium, but I wasn’t the only one dealing with external people.

For instance, our public relations people did all the, the media work, you know, I mean, if I needed to be called in, I’d be auxiliary to it. But I thought when he said that, I thought, oh my gosh, I, I’m being phased out.

I thought, what is this position he’s talking about?

I remember meeting with people and I’m thinking, I gotta look for another job. I, I don’t know if this is gonna last, how this is gonna work out. I was just so cruShedd at the time.

And again, because I was taken away from the animal collection, you know what I mean?

Yes, I could go visit them, but I had no oversight anymore. Direct oversight of the animal collection. So anyway, over time, you know, I thought, well, okay, here’s what I think the job should do and communicate that to the boss and make it work. And it served me well for the rest of my career. I’m not sure what status is of that position. Now I am assuming there was a woman that came on right as I was leaving and she had more experience in the legislative community. She had worked for, I don’t know, it might have been a state congressman or something. She had some familiar familiarity on that level.

But it, it, you know, the good thing about it was I got to go to say education or conservation research.

I’m like, Hey, you know what?

I need to go to Washington to talk to.

So-and-so about this aspect of our operations now, you know, can you gimme an update?

You know, what, what, here’s what they’re probably gonna ask. What are we doing now? So it was, you know, kind of a, an oversight thing again. But I was the lone wolf with that. I had no staff or anything. It just felt like, I’m not sure how long this is gonna last. And anyway, I survived it and I, I retired and that was my last position.

Well now you, when you say you retired, you, you had 40 years with the institution, which is unusual, but can you discuss the reasons that would, that you thought about that a lot?

Wanted that you wanted to stay so long in one place?

Here’s the deal. I so was so fortunate in my career at Shedd with the advancements and the increased responsibility and the ability to basically follow my passion directly for most of the positions I held that I just felt didn’t feel a strong desire to move on. And I did not have a strong desire to go to director level. I, I just thought, I don’t, I don’t wanna do that. And I’d had several headhunters approach me and I remember one interview that was talking about, you know, a large part of your responsibility will be development. And I’m like, oh, you know, now I realize, yes, of course that’s a huge part, fundraising.

But I was like, oh my gosh, what do I know about that?

You know? And it turned out I was gonna be in competition with a university that was going for going through the same people for essentially the same money. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is not gonna work out. And I, I would come home, you know, after interviews, talk to my wife, I said, you know, they’re showing interest in me.

Do you want me to pursue this?

How do you feel about moving to this part of the country?

And she’s, well I, you know, would there be a guarantee that I’d be making the same money as a teacher in this new area?

And she was in one of the highest paid school districts in Illinois working Glenbrook South High School. And I’m like, eh, I don’t know that you’re gonna get the same money. And she goes, you know, we got the two kids, we had two young daughters, you know, and you know, they’ve got friends and they don’t wanna move. And our family is here. I love she aquarium. And it’s just like, things are going great for me. The only time I really thought I gotta look elsewhere is when I was moved into this legislative and external affairs position. I thought, oh this, they’re, I’m being phased out and I better look elsewhere. It only lasted 17 years. Yep.

Did you have a favorite animal?

Man, that’s a tough one. Yeah, you know, I’m a fishes guy so, you know, I’m likely to say fish, but I would, I would say if I had to have a favorite, it’s probably sea otters. They’re, they’re pretty interesting animals. They’re a challenge for sure. But we did really well with them. And I actually, I actually kind of don’t like to say this is my favorite animal because no one stands out and I don’t want to say all the others are second tier because to my mind, even the little mineral guys we’re pretty cool animals. And they’re part of the exhibit you, they’re part of the component. So, nah, I guess, you know, to be honest, well, you know, the one animal at the time that might have been a favorite would’ve been Chico.

The freshwater river dolphin. Everybody loved Chico. And, but you know, after we expanded the collection, I’m like, they’re all cool.

What animal species would you consider to be the most significant that you acquired?

Ooh, you know, might have been some of the sea horses that were difficult to come by, especially sea dragons, leafy sea dragons, Woody Wheaty, sea dragons, difficult to acquire. People had a hard time getting ’em to breed. Although several aquariums have now had success. Those were tough. The other one that jumps out is probably Chamber Nautilus, which were very cool. Here I go and I’m thinking, but also don’t forget the Deep Sea Isop pods that we got that found depth and they’re just like big pill bugs. So bugs kind of difficult to maintain. But we did well with them for a while.

Just very unusual animals that most other facilities had never heard of. Much less exhibited.

Can you talk a little about, you mentioned the lung fish, which was one of your longevity?

Yep. Yeah, we acquired two Australian Lungfish, 1933. The then director reached out to the Australian government and for the Chicago World’s Fair, the, it was at the century of Progress World’s Fair. He wanted some unusual animals that had never been seen in the United States. And so we, among other things, got these two lungfish and, gosh, I’m trying to remember when it was probably in the nineties, maybe just over 2000, we got noticed that the ambassador from the Australian consulate wanted to come over and give us a certificate of successful husbandry. ’cause we’d kept this animal for so long and it was kind of a dog and pony thing. I got to introduce him and talk about the animal. But basically say animal’s been here since 1933 and really, you know, and like, yeah, we have no idea how long they live, you know, nor did the Australians. But that was by far the record for the longest lived Australian lungfish.

I think the one granddad, the last survivor, we actually ended up having to euthanize ’cause it had numerous organ failures, but it was kind of a cool animal, even though all it did was lay on the bottom once in a while, come up and take a breath of air. But it was cool to talk about because that like several other fish species, depending on their gills for gas exchange, but they also had to come and breathe atmospheric air. And I thought, wow, that’s weird.

Why would they have to have to do that?

And I remember when I was taking i i theology in college, I was curious about that. So I had kissing Gus, which are the same way. They would come up and breathe air occasionally. And I thought, I wonder if I could deprive them from getting to the surface. How would they do? So I had an oxygen meter in the water and I’m monitoring the oxygen and they’re swimming normally. And then within a half hour they’re like starting to be jerky, swimming around and they’re, I could see that they need to get to the surface and eventually they would kind of like start roll over on their sides. I’m like, yikes, take that barrier from the surface away and let ’em get to the surface. And they resuscitated just like that.

But I thought, wow, interesting. I wonder why that is. And that’s, that was all I did. I never, you know, dissected the gills or anything to figure out what was the problem. But there are some fish species that are adapted to having to breathe atmospheric air as well as depend on their lungs.

Who knew You had a unique opportunity to bring your dog to work?

Ah, How did that happen?

That was a fun story. I was single and I had this dog actually acquired him in California when I was working on the fish farm operation. And my friend and I each got a puppy from the same litter. So when I came back to Chicago and I got the job back at Chat Aquarium within the week, you know, I was by myself, so I thought, oh, that’s poor dog. I hope you can hold it till I get back home. You know, it’s tugging eight hours plus transport time. So one time I knew, I think there was a shipment coming in and I had to be at the aquarium for like 14 hours. I thought, oh, I can’t do that to the dog.

I’m gonna try and sneak ’em in. So we used to come in through the loading dock and I would have to come in maybe a hundred feet, go up a flight of stairs and I’d be in my office. I thought if I could just get in there, get him in my office, nobody will know. Certainly not the director. And so I give it a shot and I hit him off leash, which I often walked him off leash.

And we come in, he’s trotting about 20 feet ahead of me and who’s the first person we walk into?

Bill Breaker, the director. I’m like, oh no. And Bucky goes walking up to him, tails Wagon and Breaker was a lover of dogs. He’s like, Hey buddy, hey, he is petting on me. Looks up.

He goes, Hey Jim, you know whose dog this is?

I’m like, oh yeah, it’s the breaker. It’s my dog. I explained why I brought him in. He says, oh, that’ll be fine, that’ll be fine. Just don’t let him up in the public area. So, oh, no, no, no, I, I promise he’s stay in my office. You know, take him out at lunch. And I took that as carte blanche and Bucky came to work with me every day for 10 years after that. It was great. He was like the unofficial mascot.

I have a pencil drawing that the trainers had commissioned an artist to do of him. And in the frame is the she Aquarium ID of Bucky. He’s got his own employee id. So it was a great story and it was great to have him around and, you know, everybody loved him. It was kind of like the unofficial mascot or the aquarium. So You said you were a fish guy. Is there any, in your opinion, for an aquarium, is there any holy grail of, of, of a type of fish that you would, if money was not an object that you would say, I’d love to try and exhibit it for a variety of reasons. Yeah, probably the, the main reason is one that had never been exhibited anywhere else before. And there’s a lot of reasons why that didn’t happen.

Could be logistically difficult to obtain. It may not be able to survive at these atmospheres. When I say that, there’s two animal groups that I think of. One is a cila cat, which was thought to be extinct until like the late 1920s when it shows up in a fish market. Some fishermen had acquired it and presented it to the, the fish market folks. And somebody happened to come upon it and realize, wow, this animal was thought to be extinct by science. Yet here it is. That is an animal that’s found at depth. I I’ve heard 300 to 400 feet.

So there’s a lot of pressure there. I’m not sure that the animal will be able to survive at atmospheric pressure that we experience every day, perhaps, but we don’t know and difficult to obtain as well. The other one would be deep sea fishes. Those that are found at the very abyssal plains of the oceans that never see the light of day, that develop bio lucent organs to either attract the mate to attract food, whatever. Again, you’ve got the pressure differential. That would be a challenge. Not to mention actually getting down to that depth and being able to say net one or put one in a container. I know Japanese facilities have been very interested in both of those as well.

But I’m not aware of anyone that’s been able to exhibit those at all for any degree of time. I have heard of seal camps that have been brought to the surface. Their, their time at that level wasn’t long.

It’s not like a permanent exhibit animal. So Is our octopus difficult to maintain in captivity and has the Shedd done it?

They are a challenge. And yes, we have been successful. We even had a little blue ring octopus that are highly venomous. I mean, arm to arm. They’re about that big. But they have beautiful, like iridescent blue rings on their body. They, they have a venom that if they bite you with their little beak, it’ll kill you within minutes. We had those, it was actually acquired if you want, if you’ll believe it through the pet trade.

Like how did the pet trade get permission to sell these things to the public?

You wouldn’t see ’em commonly, but you did see them in like wholesalers, places we would most commonly keep, you could keep oc octopus vulgaris, which is very common, gets to be about that long. And the most recently, the giant Pacific octopus can, if you’ve got a big one, you’ve got one that’s 15 to 20 feet across. The kind finds of the, of an exhibit are a challenge. They don’t really, you know, swim any great distances. It’s more important for them to hide, but to be able to roam about. But the thing is, they’re very sensitive to heavy metals. So, you know, for instance, way back in the day we used to have cast iron pipe conducting the water among all the exhibits. That would be something of concern for a, an octopus since long ago.

We have since replaced with plastic pipes, so that’s not an issue. But the water chemistry has to be very good. The temperature is a tight requirement. They giant Pacific octopus need colder water. I think the maximum we held ’em with was 55 degrees Fahrenheit. And just to see what it felt like, I would sometimes put my hand in there and you couldn’t hold it in there. 30 seconds, you come out and just be numb. You could hardly flex your fingers. So special chilling.

There’s special life support that’s required for an octopus. Not all do well, you know, in the confines of our exhibitory, either some thrive and they’re all over the place. Others just kind of hold up in a corner and look kind of shriveled up, which is, you know, not the best exhibit animal, but we have had them over the years, we’ve had good success with them. And it’s one of those animals that the Aquarius work with the trainers to facilitate various behaviors with. And they become the, the, those that responsible for keeping the animals become endeared to them. They of course name them. They, they’ll go to the back and lift the top. We have to make sure there’s a, a solid top on the exhibit so the animal doesn’t crawl out.

But also they’ll come and they’ll grab your arm. They kind of come up here and they’ll feel you and they’ll allow you to pet them a little bit. Of course, when you feed ’em, they usually back into their exhibit. But it’s a, it’s a challenging animal and they’re the escape artists. We have had to put AstroTurf around the tops of the exhibits that they’re inhabiting because they depend on suction to move. And with AstroTurf they can’t get a good suction hold. So all kinds of interesting challenges. Part of the education thing, you had indicated that Shedd and other aquariums try and educate the public about shark fin soup, seahorses eating seafood.

How did that all come about?

That was part of a newer conservation department and that would’ve been, that probably kicked off by the former curator of fishes, Roger Ec. He got into the very early stages of developing a conservation department. And out of that became not only conservation of resources, but also conservation of various animals that we dealt with. Getting the word out about various practices that were not conducive to the environment. And the, the conservation department just kind of grew until the point that we hired a PhD that was doing research over in The Bahamas and a very sharp individual, a great spokesperson. And in time we asked him to hire other research scientists to kind of bolster our efforts. It also had to do with, you know, plastic pollution for instance, or energy use or you know, water use. You know, like we’re on the shores of a great lake.

Why is that of concern?

Well, you know, it gets into the, the overflow issues, you know, with a heavy rainfall, the combined sewer and street overflow, I mean water where unfortunately some houses would have an overflow into their basements where you might have sewage coming up type of thing. Just kind of informing the public about regular everyday activities they can do to hopefully preclude some of these situations from developing. Much of it’s out of our hands, but for instance, with the water thing, it’s like, hey, if you know there’s gonna be heavy rainfall, try not to do the wash. You’re putting a good amount of wash into the sewer system. Wash water. It’s like, well, yeah, but I’m only one guy.

But I’m like, yeah, well what about the rest of the neighborhood?

So it’s, you know, it that’s, you know, one of those things that I think enlightens people, hopefully they practice, you know, what we’re advising them. Plastic pollution is a huge thing. Now. We’ve tried to work with some municipalities as far as getting rid of plastic bags, like at a grocery store or wherever you’re buying things, there is a charge for plastic bag. But to my mind, it’s not a good enough incentive. And I believe there’s legislation in Illinois, I’m not current on this, but to basically outlaw them in many applications. And it’s, I think it’s several years away before implementation, but I see them all the time. And you know, when I’m kayaking on the Chicago River or riding my bike somewhere, you see ’em everywhere. You see ’em up in the trees, it’s like, geez.

It’s just, you know, it’s noxious and to some degree it’s, it’s not good for animals. So.

So the Shedd has been successful in talking to people about the type of fish that are endangered and what they could eat?

Yes, yes. We shouldn’t Be, Yeah, that one, we have a whole program that we tried to develop our own little wallet card, but we realized, you know, Monterey Bay Aquarium has taken the lead on this. They have a staff of, I wanna say 15 or 20 people that do research on worldwide fisheries. And they come up with a card that basically has green, yellow and red, green, meaning these are sustainable. There’s a good population, they’re not being overfiShedd. And the collection methods, the fishing methods are environmentally responsible. Yellow means like, eh, maybe once in a while, but they’re kind of on that edge. And red is like, yeah, you should definitely avoid buying that seafood. It’s a nice program. It’s great.

I don’t know that it’s got widespread acceptance. Most people are unfamiliar with it. But there are websites where you can actually, you know, call up an app and if you’re in a restaurant it’ll tell you, you know, these fish are okay. Unfortunately it gets into some fisheries are okay, others are not.

And if you’re in a restaurant, you ask the wait staff person it, where did this come from?

I’m not sure. You know, like they don’t know the origin. So, you know, if there’s any question, I usually avoid it. I usually say, you know what they don’t know and it’s, it may not be the best. So, but we promote good fisheries, you know, ones that we know are sustainable. Incidentally, one of the Aquarius before I left, hooked into a, a group called Hooked On Fish, which is here in Chicago each week, they offer, if you are a subscriber, you can, they give you a choice of two fish species that are available for sale. And so, you know, you can say, yeah, let me have the walleye, let me have the monk fish, whatever. Because, and we did a lot of research into them. They are into the environmentally responsible practices as well as sustainability.

And the best thing is the fish quality is so good. My wife, who would never eat fish, loves the fish now every week. It’s a good fresh product. I don’t know how they do it. We’re far from any ocean. There’s some that come from the Great Lakes like whitefish and walleye perch, but the majority are from the oceans. But they’re consistently good quality. And I always like to give ’em a little plug. And I’ve been a member for, well, like seven or eight years probably.

So well worth it feels good to do the right thing. Jim, you’ve been with the Shedd very, very long time.

But during your time at the Shedd Aquarium, what had, what did you hope to accomplish but you were unable to finish?

Oh gosh. There were many things that we were working toward. I guess if I had to say one thing as when I became the director over the entire animal collection, I was looking for ways to meld the marine mammal department with the Fishes Department cross training, for instance, at the very least. And we did start making inroads prior to my retirement with trainers working with the Aquarius and actually training some of these fish or more likely reptile. For instance, we had a alligator snapping turtle that we wanted to get regular weights on. The old way was to lower the tank, get in there, hope nobody gets bit, and carry the animal out and put it on a scale. We had a slight ramp in the tank that the animal is trained to climb up the ramp, crawl out of the tank onto the scale and sit there. Of course it gets rewarded with food. And we were able to get an accurate weight weekly, which was very helpful to the veterinary staff as far as monitoring the health of the animal.

We worked with the octopus, very intelligent animal, but getting the trainers to interact with the Aquarius was a bit of a challenge. They don’t necessarily speak the same language. So that was in progression, I presume it’s still going, that they’re looking for things to accomplish together. The, the other thing that, boy, I was really hoping that would happen, and it hasn’t yet, I don’t know if it will in the near future, is why don’t we put fish in with the marine mammals, things that would create more of a natural representation of a habitat. We can’t mimic the ocean, we acknowledge that. But there are animals that would be, would do very well in the marine mammal enclosures. And that hopefully wouldn’t be considered prey animals by the marine mammals. So that would be something you’d have to consider.

Probably larger fish would be the answer to something like that. That has not happened. We did try it with the sea otters and Monterey Bay Aquarium had success and I actually got the list of fish. They had success with putting in with the sea otters. Sea otters had mild interest, but after a while they were just there. They were just part of the enclosure. So the idea is to replicate the habitat as naturally as possible. And in doing that, you wanna make sure there’s other animals besides just the marine mammals.

So What, during your time, what was your most difficult time at the aquarium?

Oh gosh. I would venture to say probably when we started acquiring the marine mammals, a tremendous amount of animal, right?

Activism. We’re a large city. We had local individuals. We actually had some people that were more international, even in scope. But certainly on a national level coming in to the front of the aquarium and staging protests, trying to divert our guests away from coming to the Aquaquarium. The good thing was by the time our guests were at the Aquaquarium, they were committed. We’re going in, I don’t care what you guys say, we had disruptions right before a marine mammal presentation. The Oceanarium has a beautiful glass wall looking from the seating area out onto Lake Michigan over the marine mammal pools. And the activists knew our training schedule. They would show up 15 minutes before and start staging these goofy plays and everything trying to disrupt our activities.

And the way we ended up curtailing, that was number one. There was not a lot of interest on the half on behalf of the audience, but it was disruptive. They were distracted, but we had curtain walls that would drop down and that would, that was the end of that. But there was dealing with the activists on that level. But certainly when we went to actually acquire the animals, for instance, in California, we had, well, we had death threats. We had people, when we would be walking from our holding facility to the apartments, we were renting people right behind us, screaming at us, you know, we’re gonna take you down. You know, you wait till you get back to Chicago. We actually, in the Dolphin holding compound during the last acquisition, we had to wall off the marina.

It was a, it wasn’t being used as a marina anymore, but we had to create a barrier around the marina with 24 hour security, just because the activists were parked right across the street and looking for us to screw up so that they could capture that they would yell at us on a relative basis, on a regular basis. And it was just the harassment. After a while, you know, we knew we’re doing okay, everything is fine, the animals are fine, and it’s just kind of like background noise after a while. But it was just that constant attack that was very unsettling and you wondered what might happen. And if I may, in that regard, prior to the, we did two acquisitions of dolphins. The second one, which happened to be the last collection in the United States, a marine mammals, we did off the Channel Islands in California. Richard Donner, who was a producer of Free Willie, had organized a flotilla, or armada, whatever he wanna call it. He had like-minded individuals that were gonna come out in whatever kind of watercraft they had and disrupt our collecting activities.

I was called to a meeting with Coast Guard from San Diego and Los Angeles, and they said they wanted to know what we’re gonna do, where we’re gonna collect all the specifics.

And at one point, one of the Coast Guard individuals said, what would you do if one of the activists jumped in the water with a knife?

And I’m like, well, I pull my people back, you know, outta safety. He goes, we actually received that threat. And I’m like, and they also told me that if you’re beyond three nautical miles from the coastline, we can’t be out there. We can’t help you. And we were gonna be beyond that. So in any case, as we are in the area where we acquired the animals, we did see the Coastline Coast Guard off on the horizon there. They were watching us from afar. So I think they would’ve helped us, but it was the animal activism that was very disruptive and probably my most challenging time.

Now you’ve held many positions, but being a curator, especially in the eighties when you were there, what were the advantages as you saw them or disadvantages of being in that position?

You know, it was a time of tremendous growth at the aquarium. Not only of the animal collection, but in the old directions we were going. Real easy thing is, when I first started as an Aquarius, the diet we offered the fish was very basic and included horse heart. And I remember going to the curator of fishes after scooping out un eating the food the day after feeding. And I said, this horse heart looks the same after I scooped it up that it looked going in. I don’t think they’re getting any value out of this. And it was that and other things that we stopped using horse heart, but started diversifying the diet. And to this day, SHA Aquarium has a tremendous live animal, propagation, I shouldn’t say live food, animal propagation, which means brine, shrimp, small invertebrates, worms, I mean, tremendous variety of foods that we can offer.

Certainly the smaller fishes. The other thing when, besides horse art, weed feed is trout chow. It’s just dried pelleted foods like dog chow, but formulated for fish still, we use that in the off days. But on the the regular feeding days, we got into different species of fish and squid and tried to replicate as best as possible the diets that these animals would eat in the wild. So there was great growth in that direction. The lab was growing as well, as well as the functions.

Certainly the main thing was water quality monitoring, but also it had to do with the actual analysis of why did an animal get sick or why did it die?

So there was, you know, necropsies performed on animals trying to identify a bacterium or a parasite so he could treat those animals from that same tank that were still alive. The challenges came probably toward mid to late eighties, and that’s when we got into the marine mammal field. And I was named acting curator of Fish of marine mammals for about a year. And then Bill Breaker, the director at the aquarium at that time, called me into his office and sat me down. And boy, just never knew what was coming from him and says, Jim, you’re now, we’re a curator of marine mammals. It’s official. And so what that meant was a lot of research in preparing the animal, collecting permits that would go to US Fish and Wildlife or the National Marine Fishery Service at the time, but also identifying sources that could help us collect the animals. And then that was, that was met, there are people in the field that had done this for other parks, but also, again, the animal activism part. That was something that was pretty new to me.

We did have, way back, we had a dolphin, a South American river dolphin, that was the subject of, one woman in particular is concerned that, you know, we shouldn’t have that, this poor animal suffering, da da da. And I didn’t deal with her directly, but I could see that she was there pretty readily and always observing what we were doing with the animal that was magnified. Once we decided we’re getting beluga whale Pacific white sided dolphins, sea lions, sea otters, a lot of attention to the point that several of us who may serve as spokespeople for the aquaquarium were trained by our, our own in-house public relations people, but also some outside firms. So it was, you know, it’s, it’s not what I got in the field for, you know, dealing with these individuals, but it was something that, you know, was a part of the job just as getting into the legislative and regulatory arenas is when you get into marine mammals, there’s aspects that I never dreamed I would be part of that became now part of the job. And, and there were, as you mentioned, changes, and you talked about some of ’em, it seems that a acquiring work presently is becoming more female dominated profession.

Can you comment on that?

Sure. It, it has been certainly the course in the marine mammal field for a large degree. It depends on the, the size of the animals. If you’re working with killer whales, SeaWorld, for instance, actually has a workout area, a gym, so people can stay physically fit and pretty strong because these are large animals and it, it demands more of a physical presence, the, excuse me, the, the belugas and the dolphins are relatively easy to deal with and not much of a challenge in that regard.

But I’m, I’m trying to recall the direction I was going on this. What was the question About the women coming In?

The women, yeah, that was it. The women, when I was in the fish’s department, the first female Aquarius was, she could hold her own. And, you know, the guys accepted her and everything and she was expressive, shall we say, out there and did a good job. And then we hired another female and others and others until it seemed that we were about half and half female and male aquas, I would say in the fishes area. It’s not necessarily female dominated, but it certainly is in the marine mammal area. And part of it too comes down to the very practical aspect of you don’t, you’re not gonna get rich serving as an Aquarius or a marine mammal trainer. Matter of fact, when I would interview prospective candidates, they would, one of the things I would say is, I hope you really love this kind of work because you’re not gonna get rich doing this type of work. And the reality was with the traditional, the man has to be the major money maker in the household.

The women necessarily were at that time, you know, more of a subordinate role as far as the money coming into the house. So they could afford to work for a public aquarium like Shedd and not make a lot of money. So I think that was part of it. I remember asking one of our mammal trainers, a guy, I said, geez, he told me where he lived, and it was a fairly expensive, but kind of a hip area in Chicago.

I says, how can you afford on this salary to live there?

He goes, well, I, I got three roommates. I’m like, oh, okay. So I think the monetary part has a lot to do with being male or female. Now, the Aquarius don’t get paid more than the marine mammal trainers, but the bottom line is, I think it comes down to there’s a lot of geeks out there, shall I say. And we love these people because they have specialty areas, and in the the fishes department, there’s all kinds of different animals. In the marine mammal department, you’re dealing with four species and penguins. So I think, you know, there’s interest from male and female in the variety of animals we have in fishes. Whereas in the marine mammal community, it’s just naturally seen to draw women for some reason. Certainly we saw that when we had volunteers or, oh, sometimes interns in the marine mammal department, their, their goal is to become part of the staff.

And, you know, they did get to have great animal experiences and everything, but the percentage that actually moved into a full-time role was pretty small. So a lot of interest. And you talked about different positions, which we’ll we’ll talk about, but skill sets.

What skillset qualities does a director of collections need to be able to run an aquarium?

It was, it was a eye-opening experience for me when it, I first became the director, just a little background, I had served my highest level in the fishes department, and I was an assistant curator, and then I was a curator of marine mammals, and then I became director, director over the entire animal collection. The, an open mind is real important. I found there’s people that are very expert in certain areas. For instance, an invertebrate expert would know way more than I do. I always likened it to being, I was the baseball manager, I was the, the guy in the dugout that never got on the field, but I was managing the team. And I recognize that this guy’s a great shortstop and this is our designated hitter. This is the best of that role. You see that same thing with overseeing the entire animal collection.

There’s people that are really good at certain areas. Again, I was a very strong proponent of cross training, even fresh water to salt water type of thing, where people would get a more, a widespread portfolio, if you will, which would help us in the short term, but also help them in their further career advancements. Hopefully the public relations part was a big deal as well. There’s certainly, you know, new animals and it’s always a fun thing, you know, and the, the newspapers come in or radio stations and, you know, you often had to service spokesperson to those individuals. And you know, we were trained as far as the getting the message across, answering the question directly type of thing. Of course, it’s always fun to go and embellish a story with a personal story as well, but the public relations part was a big part of it as well. And what I found out is, in a big way, when we acquired marine mammals, was getting to know legislators and regulatory people were getting permits from the regulators, the federal government. We would go usually with the parent organization, a ZA, go to the hill and go speak to our senators and our congressmen about what we’re doing.

Maybe a piece of legislation that might be of interest to us, maybe some regulatory activity. And there’s often, as you know, another side to the issue. It’s not just our opinion. So it was really important for us to get to know those individuals on a personal basis, which I, I’ll admit, at first I was intimidated. I thought, oh my gosh, I’m going to Washington. I’m gonna talk to a US senator. They love you. They, they welcomed us in. They were, I remember going to see Carol Mosley Braun one time, and she was extremely receptive, gave me a lot of time.

And she told me this story. She goes, don’t tell anyone this, but when I was a child in Chicago, she goes, sometimes we would cut school, but we’d go to the museums. There’s a wonderful collection of museums in the city of Chicago. And I said, well, that’s a learning experience. That’s one of the things we’d like to promote. She goes, absolutely. So she was not a hard sell, she was already on board with us. But there are, you know, our point in meeting with legislative or regulatory people is to illustrate our point and why that’s important, why we think that’s important.

And it was, after a while, I very much enjoyed that role because it’s a passion. It’s something that I feel personally, and I can speak to it very easily. Now, is the skill set for a curator different, I suppose you’re more hands on, the curator would be, you know, stepped down from the director of the animal collections. They’re more focused on their specific department at chat aquarium, there’s the marine mammal department and the fishes department. But they, again, you know, they have to have an open mind and listen to other people’s opinions. But I think more importantly, they have to know the natural history of the animals as well as they can. Certainly diet, certainly habitat requirements with marine mammals, there are requirements you have to live by. I always consider them the lowest common denominator, aquarium and newer facilities, when they build new pools, would always strive to be the biggest or the best or, you know, whatever, most innovative.

But the, the deal is that I think the curator is one that is hopefully more on the floor, more getting to see what’s going on, you know, has a hand in things, perhaps at times, certainly overseeing a transport or whatever. But in addition to that, a ZA has gone big time into conservation breeding programs.

I mean, it’s been going on for decades now, but how can we contribute?

How can we help affect collecting from the wild?

And, and the thing with fishes is to try to minimize how much we’re taking from the wild. Again, there’s some pushback, for instance, in Hawaii collecting of some reef animals or is prohibited. So there are some animals that were favorites of an aquarium that, a variety of aquariums. There’s a consortium, they’re actually breeding now and they’re breeding them within a zoo or aquarium with the intent of sharing them with our partner aquariums, such that we can get around having to take them from the wild. The challenge is we hold, gosh, I would guess hundreds of different species of fishes. So it’s very difficult to breed some, and you can’t breed them all. So the efforts are good, but it’s not going to solve the problem. We will always have to collect from the wild.

So the, the curator would be more directly involved with that type of activity.

What would you say is the largest professional problem facing US aquariums today, and what can be done to correct the problem?

Boy, you know, the thing that jumps to mind, it’s going to seem kind of unusual, but to run an aquarium is very expensive. There’s number one, the variety in the number of exhibits. But the bottom line is you have life support that is critical to these animals. Certainly you need to meet, you know, salt water, fresh water, temperature requirements, all the things that are involved with the animal’s habitat requires electricity. You gotta run pumps 24 hours a day. There’s other auxiliary pieces of how you treat the water that are usually run by electricity. It’s a very costly venture to operate an aquarium professionally, I think the challenge is to try to present, well, it depends on the theme of the aquarium, but to present as diverse a collection as possible. You know, if you say, okay, we’re just going to do animals of Japan.

Well, okay, there’s still a lot of animals, but at least you’ve narrowed the scope. She aquarium’s tagline at one time was the world’s aquarium, which some of us in the, in the husbandry area thought, who, kind of a bold statement, you know, we don’t have all the world’s fishes represented here. But the idea was that we have a collection from a lot of different places around the world and could talk about not only those animals, but also the habitats and why the habitats are important. Another thing as far as you know, professional consideration is trying to get involved in conservation work, certainly nationally, if not intern internationally. Meaning that we are involved in trying to not only preserve the animals that are there, but also educate our public about things like pollution. Plastic, pollution’s a huge one in the oceans right now. And why, you know, it’s important that you maybe start using substances other than plastics. So there’s educational messages.

The big thing with the habitats is that generally they’re being degraded. We have climate change, we’re raising the temperature of the oceans. I would never dream that’s possible, but animals respond to that. Animals may migrate, animals may not tolerate that. A big thing that Shedds involved with our corals, corals are dying in mass numbers because of elevated temperatures. We actually are working with a consortium of aquariums, trying to identify those corals that can actually tolerate the warmer temperatures and propagate them as the reefs of the future, if you will. So there’s, there’s a lot of, it’s not just our aquarium, our, it’s not just Chicago. It’s a national and international in many cases, consideration.

The other thing about, you know, the, the breeding programs is working cooperatively and there’s a very sophisticated animal record keeping system in a ZA such that we monitor and we actually try to identify pairings of animals that are not closely related. There’s, there’s a lot of scrutiny paid to the animal collection. And knowing individuals when you can, the, the, the thing about once you’re successful in a breeding program, you can actually saturate the market. There’s perhaps only so many institutions that want a yellow tang. The idea of a, why don’t we put ’em back in the wild doesn’t always work. Number one, the animals are not used to living in the wild. Not to say that they can’t, but I would say they have a lesser chance of success being reintroduced or being introduced into the wild. The other thing that really causes concern for me is the degradation of habitats.

So sometimes putting an animal in a specific habitat is not in their best interest because of pollution or somehow it’s been altered. So there’s, there’s a lot of considerations that have to be considered when looking at a national scope or international. So You had talked about activism.

Can you go into a little detail though about the white sided dolphin issue and how you were involved and what was going on?

That’s a hot one. The, we had conducted the dolphin collection in two parts. We had a permit to take eight animals. The first venture was 1989, I believe. Anyway, we collected five animals. We had ’em in a, an offsite facility so they could acclimate, you know, to our environment, if you will, and worked with the animals. And unfortunately one of them had a lesion on its tail that developed into a serious bacterial infection. And we actually lost one of the animals. So right off the bat, it’s like, you guys don’t know what you’re doing.

You know, if this, like, this happens in the wild, you just don’t see it in the wild. The second collection was tremendously more controversial because there was a much more unified front of the animal activists trying to stop us and other facilities from acquiring animals from the wild.

Even though it’s a permitted activity by the National Marine Fishery Service or by US Fish and Wildlife Service, there’s a lot of consideration as far as how many you can take and from what environment you can take them. So What were the steps though that to, to get all of those permits?

And were you running the, or were you running this operation?

What was it taking with manpower from the Shedd to acquire it?

How long had you started thinking about this, that kind of stuff?

Sure, sure. The collection, when I became Marine Mammal curator, the collection was pretty well set. Bill Breaker, the director, had basically overseen that prior to my coming on board and said, Pacific White sided dolphins, beluga whales, sea otters, harbor Seals, California sea lions. We also were head put in a permit for false killer wells. And that’s another story I can share. But the collection had to fit in the confines of our building. We had, gosh, upwards of about 3 million gallons. And we had to make sure that the animals could exist together and comfortably within those pools. So my involvement beginning with, okay, we’re going to, we’re gonna target Pacific white sided dolphins.

So had to go to the research and there’s actually surveys that are done by the federal government that identify approximate numbers of animals in a given population. So we said, okay, we’re going to collect off the Southern California bite, B-I-G-H-T, and it’s a huge area off the coast of California.

One of the first pushbacks was by activists saying, well, what does that mean?

And we show it on a map, this is what we think it is. And they said, no, no, no, no, that’s not the Southern California, but it’s a much smaller area. So that we were more concentrated and would probably not realize success. This actually became contentious. We hired a high priced Washington lawyer to take our, we ended up going to a district court in California at San Francisco. We were almost thwarted in the last minute in our collecting of the white sided dolphins. The second collection, it was, it’s like I was just accompanying him. I could give an aspect of Shedd aquarium’s interest, but he was the one running the show as far as guaranteeing we’re getting that permit.

It’s already been issued by the government, it’s legit. And this is where we’re collecting the, the big deal was the Richard Donner Flotilla that was gonna try and thwart our efforts. They were gonna try find us number one out on the ocean and then get between us and any prospective animals and, you know, totally make it impossible for us to collect. So we weren’t sure where they were gonna appear, but we decided we’re not gonna go between the coastline of California and the Channel Islands, which is where they ended up going. Richard Donner and his folks, we went on the outside, which is the Pacific Ocean. You can’t just cruise around in a boat and hope to find dolphins. So we actually had an aerial spotter, had a individual on a plane that could cover a much more area and say, I see huge school of dolphins at, you know, this latitude or this longitude. And we would proceed in that direction.

And just like the ancient Mariners, when you get to an area and you see a huge flock of birds just over the water, probably feeding, that’s where you’re gonna find fish that they’re feeding on. And also dolphins, hopefully, that are feeding on the fish. And that’s, that was kind of the way we honed in on where these animals might be. So we had a large vessel and we were very fortunate to collect the last three dolphins on one day, because if it had taken multiple days, word would’ve probably gotten to the flotilla to, oh, here’s where they are. Let’s go out there and thwart their efforts. The other thing that happened was we were keeping the animals in San Diego, but we were north of San Diego. The animal activists perceived that will probably come, you know, by boat through San Diego Harbor. So they actually had set up a small blockade at the harbor entrance.

Well, we had taken an alternate route, come in at another city further north and had rented a truck and we had transport containers and we drove the animals down to San Diego and got ’em in their tanks without the activists even knowing this is a kind of machinations we had to go through, it was just, it was like a spy versus spy type of thing. It was crazy. I mean, I never dreamed I would be involved with something like this, including the Coast Guard meeting with the Coast Guard and hearing their concerns and hearing specifics from us about where and how we intended to collect. And then once we got into the facility in San Diego, there were activists there that were basically trying to harass us, trying to observe us 24 hours, looking for us to, you know, make an error somehow, you know, somehow jeopardize the health of an animal, which is obviously not in our best interest nor the animals. And it was, while we were there, there was this, this presence all the time. We had to go out onto a, a city street to go from the holding facility to the apartments we were renting. And we had individuals from the activist community literally right behind us screaming at us. And it’s very unnerving and you just don’t know, might it erupt in physical violence. So we did hire 24 hour security at that holding facility.

The another sidelight of this is that when it was, I think we’d had the animals two weeks. I’m not a marine mammal trainer, so I, I said to the assistant curator, I said, you know, I’m gonna head back to Chicago. You’ve got a staff here that can care for the animals until we’re ready to move them. So I’m gonna go back. Well, there were a, there was a Westgate and an Eastgate to our facility and we, we had our car inside the facility and we were gonna go out the Westgate, but that’s where there was probably 20 activists. And I’ll tell you, Southern California is a hotbed of activism. So as we’re going to the car, the individual that was overseeing the marina walked toward us and he was pointing toward the opposite side, the east side like this. And he’s telling us, go out that way.

So we get in the car and we start driving. The activists run around our facility, it’s a city block, and they get to the east side and we just were able to pull out before they surrounded the car and made us stop. We had, we couldn’t drive other than running over them. And they’re screaming at us and they’re banging on the sides of the windows. I thought the windows are gonna smash in.

And I’m saying to my assistant, the driver, I said, where are the cops?

You know where we need some help here. Finally one police officer shows up. And I thought, okay. And he really didn’t do anything.

And I thought, what’s going on?

Well, he was waiting for backup. And when they arrived he said, okay, separate. Give ’em room, let ’em drive out. And as we slowly crept through the crowd, them still banging on the windows. I remember one individual leaping on the hood and flipping us off right through the windshield with his crystal hanging from his neck saying, you can’t take our dolphins. You guys can’t take our dolphins. And the whole ride to the airport.

I was looking out the back, are we being trailed?

I remember when I got out, I’m looking around, there’s anybody with, I’m walking through the terminal, I’m like, is there anybody still following me?

It was that level of paranoia because of these guys’ presence. So they did a good job as far as voicing their opinion, if you will, but they didn’t stop our activities. And ultimately when you got the animals back, also you had to do it under high security in Chicago. Yeah, yeah. The, once we brought the animals back and we loaded on the back of a, a flatbed truck, we had police escorts going from O’Hare Airport down to the aquarium all the way down Kennedy Expressway. And the police were extremely cooperative. They understood what we’re trying to do. They, you know, they, they’re not taking sides, they’re just doing their job. And they were there to basically cordon off the aquarium grounds once any protestors might have shown up, such that, you know, an individual could not run up to one of the transport containers and try and do something unusual.

So it was, it was heavily guarded. There was times, I remember we would move an animal during the evening hours when people might not be expecting it. And often it was more a matter of logistics, it was better. Number one, it’s cooler, which the marine mammals needed cooler temperatures, but also it had to do with the flights, the available flights. Often we would use a commercial freight plane that we might be the only freight on the plane, so it’s very expensive.

But there were times too where they had a dead, a deadhead flight where they’re going back to a certain airport empty anyway, so why don’t we put the whales on?

And that’s how the sea otters actually came to us. We were on a huge aircraft. It was just our staff and four sea otters, which was, to this day, I think, kind of funny. But it was very good for us because I don’t know that that one even cost us anything. They were coming back to Chicago anyway.

Would you say animal rights activists are more interested in marine mammals or, and the otters and the whales and so forth?

Or are they also interested in the fishes?

The big one are the marine mammals, just because they’re the big, you know, everybody loves the marine mammals, the whales, the dolphins. I mean, look at our gift shop sales. When you’re selling plush animals, it’s always a little beluga, a seal, a sea otter. I always say, when you look under the dictionary under the word cute, you find a picture of a baby sea otter. They’re, they’re just so endearing to the public. But there are, there is that element of activism, not necessarily toward specific fishes, but more the environment from which you might be acquiring these animals like a, a, a coral reef. And there is, there is legitimacy to their concern. And, and we share that if you repeatedly go to the same reef to collect the same species of fish year after year, the likelihood is you are gonna deplete, if not eliminate that population.

So places like The Bahamas, which was a common collecting place for us, we always have to report to the Bahamian government in getting a permit from them, how many animals we intend to collect and where we intend to collect them. And the C Aquarium for years has kept a log as far as, well, we know we can get black cap bassets at this location, so let’s go there.

’cause they’re hard to find. But after a while we said, you know what?

We, we need to find other locations. We can’t keep going back to the same place. And so indeed that’s what we did. So through scuba diving, you know, obviously you can see the animals and you realize here’s a good place, here’s a good place. So there is concern toward the fish’s realm, but I think it’s more involved with the habitat as opposed to marine mammals, where it’s more the animals and the individual animals especially. So, you know, if you, well SeaWorld, they identify many animals as Shamu, but everybody loves Shamu. That’s the animal. It’s, it’s, it’s something that really, I don’t know, I guess it, it helps their mission, but it also endears their public to the animal collection.

If you have, you know, Sparky the favorite beagle, you know, everybody’s, oh, I wanna see Sparky. Where’s Sparky? You know, if you see Shamu, you wanna go to the Shamu and sit in their first five rows. So you get splaShedd by Shamu and you can talk about it. I think there’s a lot more attachment, emotional attachment to marine mammals.

So do you feel that curators and professional staff need more training to interact with animal rights groups?

It wouldn’t hurt, certainly in all the public relation training we had, we would often identify representative individuals that you could tell in working with the staff. This guy’s a great spokesperson. He’s level-headed. He basically identifies, you know, elements of our mission, you know, education, conservation, whatever. He can deliver a good solid positive message. But the reality is, most of the interactions we would have with the press or anybody externally, is probably gonna go through someone from public relations, either by themselves and or with a curator or assistant curator, someone that’s in a position of high responsibility that can speak to this animal pretty directly. Seldom do they get into the minutia of what it it takes to care for this animal.

But, you know, you could come across, do you think these animals are comfortable living in this small concrete bathtub?

That’s the common image that the activists always try to, to present. And the, the reality, our, our response is we recognize we’re not the ocean. We’re never gonna be the ocean. But we try to preserve, well preserve, but present a healthy environment to the animal. We give them adequate swimming room, a lot of interaction with the staff. They get regular veterinary care, they get high quality food. It’s human grade food that we’re offering them. And through our training program, there’s tremendous amount of interaction.

So it’s that all those elements are things that would be presented and it’s often best to those people in a higher level of management. But again, if it’s maybe a specific animal, they might say, well, you know, John over here, he, he really knows about these Australian lung fish. You know, he cares for them. Let’s bring him along so he can address some of the, oh, kind of more fun elements of, you know, Australian lung fish. You know, natural history wise or what it takes to care for them. So I think in that regard, it is helpful that the keeper staff does get some training and some recognition if they’re deemed worthy of, you know, speaking to the public. I mean, we had some pretty hard public relations training. I mean, I remember the short woman was right, right in my face with like a microphone and like challenging me and she said, you know, you’re gonna encounter this.

And a lot of people, it’s kind of taken aback. I was not the best spokesperson. I was good, but we had other individuals in some areas that could do a better job. So it depended on what the issue was or what the question was. And a lot of times it’s very positive, you know, it’s just, hey, you just got this new animal, let’s let this guy talk about it. So a keeper. So I think it is important that the keeper staff does get familiar with dealing with the press and other outside individuals.

How do you feel though, that the aquarium can achieve dialogue with animal activists?

That that is a challenge only, I encourage it. Number one, I think that’s in our best interest. There are individuals that don’t want to hear what we have to say or anything you have to say. I say, that’s not right. That’s not true. They, they, there’s no reception to our, our message type of thing. I think the best thing is to actually try and approach them and, you know, perhaps, you know, away from the press have a meaningful discussion. And early in my days as a marine mammal curator, we did just that. There was a, I wanna say it was the local chapter of the Sierra Club that was expressing concern about what we were doing.

And it wasn’t so much, you know, how we were doing it or the shape or size of our pools or what we’re feeding the animals.

They just wanna know, what are you doing, what are you, what are you bringing in and why are you doing this?

It was good, legitimate questions. So I remember one Saturday morning we invited several of their staff in. We sat around a table, we had coffee, orange juice, donuts, and just had a conversation. And it was wonderful, wonderful. We got to see each other’s side. We were able to address their concerns and spell out more, this is how we intend to do things. And you know, by the way, we are regulated by the federal government, so we at least have to do that, but we strive to do more, to do better. And we, we all left the meeting very satisfied.

And I thought, gosh, if we could only do this all the time, they were very level, very level headed group. There are other individuals that, I remember there was a brother of one of our leading animal activists that was always trying to pick a fight. I mean, literally get into a fight with our people and you know, the best thing we do is just walk away from ’em or just ignore ’em many times, you know, when we would hear there’d be a protest outside, it’s like, okay, let’s not go outside. You know, they’re, they can’t come in unless they wanna pay, but we can also turn ’em away ’cause they’re not supporting our mission. They’re gonna probably be disruptive. Came down to the point that I remember, you know, one of the key things was establishing a relationship with the editorial boards of the papers and with TV stations to the point that they got to know us. Come on in, we wanna show you what we’re doing. Same thing we do with legislators and regulators.

If you’re in town, please come by. We wanna show you how we do things. The, the whole deal about the activism was blown up tremendously in the early years with the press. It got to the point that, I remember one time we got a call from probably the Chicago Tribune and they said, Hey, we heard there’s gonna be a protest outside she aquarium Saturday from nine to 12.

What are you guys gonna do?

I’m like, well, you know, we just do our regular operations.

They’re gonna be outside the building and you know, was there anything going on?

Why are they protesting?

Like, well, no, they just kind of come here on a regular basis and they said, we’re not gonna cover it. We’ve seen this before. And they, it was nice that they contacted us and said, it’s not worth our time to come over there. And the thing that was most upsetting to me in the early days when the camera would pan the protestors, they could make it look like there’s 200 individuals when there was only maybe 20 at most. So kind of almost generating a greater controversy and was really the case.

Do animal shows like the dolphin shows, do they help to get the message across to visitors about a group of animals or conservation?

Do the shows, what is the value of the shows?

What would detractors say and what would you hope a show would be doing?

Yeah, and why We, we make a major effort to include messages about conservation, education, the animal’s, natural history, you know, their habitat, what they eat in the wild. It’s all part of the message. The the reality is, and it always bothers me, but the reality is the people are here to be entertained. There’s a few that have come in that wanna learn. You can see individuals, but that’s why, you know, all the behaviors we illustrate during a a dolphin show are behaviors that they do naturally in the wild. I remember one time collecting Pacific white sided dolphins and we were literally surrounded, our boat was by probably we were guessing 2000 animals. And they’re jumping, they’re doing the bow. One jumped and did a somersault in the air.

I said, where’s the trainer who taught up to do that?

It’s more that they’re having fun. So when animals perform for us, we can get those behaviors on cue. We can ask for it through a various, they call SD, a signal that tells the animal, we want you to do this behavior, then come back and I’ll give you some fish. But interspersed throughout that, are they educational messages that we’re trying to get across to the public. The reality is, again, that not everybody is listening really hard. Maybe doesn’t even care. I don’t know. We try to augment the presentations with a graphics and texts in the underwater viewing area so that people can learn more if they so desire. We also would have a trainer or maybe two out on the walkway around the pool after the show to be there to answer questions.

And it always had people swamping them with, they wanted to know things about the dolphins. So I think that yes, we are successful in getting the messages across. We certainly present them in multiple formats, but it’s, you know, it’s what the, what is the audience there for, you know, if you go to a zoo, if you go to an aquarium, you’d like to see diversity, you like to see the unusual, hopefully you’re interested in a little bit more.

You know, why are they here and why does Shedd aquarium use them to illustrate, you know, challenges in the wild, for instance. So Why would you say education’s important in aquariums?

What role is it playing?

Gosh, to me it’s everything. Education of our public is why we exist. Certainly you can say, well, you know, know she aquarium is showing a tremendous diversity of animals. You know, telling people about where they came from and why we have them. Sometimes, you know, this is part of a conservation breeding program, or this is animal is unique and it’s actually threatened in its own environment. We’re trying to propagate it type of thing. But more importantly, the education of the bigger picture. And in today’s world, climate change, the environment, degradation of habitat, pollution, these are all things that are potentially gonna affect the wild counterparts of the animals we have here in our collection.

You know, nowadays I, I don’t know maybe ’cause I focus on it more than some people, but the environment is just under attack and it’s like, what will it take to drive people to activism maybe, or concern or voting in a certain way?

Our efforts in education, were all over the board as is in azu or aquarium. And matter of fact, it’s, it’s, it’s got its own section in the accreditation inspection about your educational efforts and the type of programs you have. I think it’s incumbent upon us that if we have the honor of displaying all these animals and being able to care for them, that we try to educate the public about not only the animals, but the animal animal world that they’re a part of and where they came from. So I, I think education is like everything.

Yeah, you talked about breeding, but can any aquarium animals, can they be reintroduced in, in the wild and is there a wild out there to do it?

Great question. To answer the second part, is there a wild out there to do it?

That’s all ultimately my biggest concern. We were years ago, and I think the zoo aquarium community, a ZA is still propagating portilla snails, tiny snail found in South Pacific islands. One island specifically that is that natural population’s been all but decimated by an introduced larger snail. The largest snail was introduced for s cargo, but it just wiped out the native one. So several zoos and aquariums brought their little ulous snails in that we’ve had almost too, too much success. They breed like guppies and we had a ton of them, but we couldn’t put ’em back in the wild because we’re gonna put ’em to the death sentence. The yandina, the bigger snails, were still out there. The other classic example of that is Lake Victorian CIDs, lake Victor and Africa.

Africa has a tremendous diversity of sick lids. Matter of fact, they’re called the, the aquatic version of Darwin’s finches type of thing in their diversification to fill various niches in Lake Victoria. We’ve had great success in breeding all kinds of cyclics. The problem is the the lake is changing etro and it’s like, you can’t put ’em back in there. They’re not gonna make it. So I think it’s, you know, it’s a great effort that we try to breed animals. If for no other reason to reduce pressure on wild populations, the the less we have to take from the wild, the better. And we acknowledge that, but we also acknowledge that we can’t breed everything and we will have to collect from the wild on occasion. And when we do, it gets tremendous amount of scrutiny from the sovereign nation from which we’re taking the animals.

So I would say yes, you know, breeding, if nothing else is a sign of success in your husbandry program, you know, the animals are doing well enough that they’re reproducing.

But a challenge is in some cases not developing an overabundance of that species to the point that, well, what do we do with them now?

So it’s, it’s, it’s an important component of, I think today’s zoo aquarium world. You, you talked about exhibits at the She aquarium.

What was your approach to exhibit design and and how did you develop that approach?

Yeah, the, to go back to the, the early days, and I experienced that I was probably coming in on the end of the early days, but it was laughingly called the Stacked Rock exhibit, where you literally would take a certain type of rock and try to create some kind of environment for the animals. And basically it meant just stacking rocks in a 1200 gallon aquarium. And yeah, you wanna have a little hiding places for them and maybe try and make it look a little bit like a mud bank. Whatever the reality is, it was just very unattractive, very simple. It was accepted at that time and you put a group of fishes in there and hope they could do well. My philosophy, and it’s not mine alone, but the zoo aquarium community is going to more an accurate representation of a natural habitat as best you can, you know, open ocean animals would be a challenge. You can’t create an exhibit that large, but if you’re doing something on say, the Illinois River or the Great Lakes, you know, there are components of their environment that you can replicate in an aquarium enclosure. One of the ones I took great pride in when I was still an Aquarius is we had a little fish called Darters.

They’re, eh, two to three inches long and they live in little shallow stream areas. They need a current going across them. So you could put ’em in a 400 gallon aquarium, but they didn’t have the stimulation of that water flowing past them. They, they actually orient up into the current and they’ll hide behind a rock when they wanna rest. But I was able to extend a water intake pipe down to the bottom and direct a current across the bottom to the point that they exhibited natural behaviors. And that’s what we’re looking for. We’re trying to get the animals to be comfortable in the exhibit. Certainly providing hiding areas, but trying to create an environment in which the animal can act in a natural way based on the species.

And I think, you know, it’s, it’s an interesting challenge with zoos for instance, if you get larger animals and you have a, a much greater yard or you know, three dimensional aspects to it. We have three dimensional aspects to an aquarium, but it’s just not as large. But the idea is that you get an environment that not only looks good and is representative of what the real environment would look like, but also one in which the animals are comfortable and that they thrive.

Can you gimme your thoughts on new trends in aquariums in the last quarter of a century?

You’ve mentioned drastic reduction of animal species in the collections.

You talked a little about landscape immersion, but what, what are your thoughts on the trends in the last quarter century?

Yeah, again, you know, going back to creating the natural habitat and then part of that and something that I was always hopeful for and it never happened while I was at the aquaquarium, although maybe with the redesign it will happen now. I always wanted to create a larger exhibit that may not have as many species but would have animals that are, would be found in that environment. The example I had was in my gallery, which was the Great Lakes Gallery, actually knocking down the adjoin adjoining walls among a row of exhibits and creating one long river or stream that might have some side pools, has some riffle environment, would have some deeper water, different components in which you would find different species of animals that are comfortable in that part of the habitat. I think that we’re seeing that a little bit more, that we have this reduction in the number of species, zoos and aquariums and trying to make it a more representative habitat of what you might see. If you would take a safari or go scuba diving somewhere where you would see this environment and these are the species you would see. I had occasion recently to get a brief behind the scenes look at some of the Shedd renovations going on. And in the rotunda where the, the once large coral reef exhibit was, there are now two smaller exhibits, one fresh water and one salt water. And they’re not nearly as large as the original tank that was there, but they’re large and they’re going to show a good slice of, in the saltwater exhibit area, a coral reef habitat.

So there’s a lot of rock work in place. There’s a lot of locations that they know they’re gonna put coral, little coral colonies there to the point that eventually they’ll propagate and create a beautiful coral wall. And then associated with that, you’re gonna have fishes that are not only part of that coral reef exhibit, but also those that help with overgrowth of algae, which can overgrow corals and kill them. So there’ll be little butterfly fish and whatever in their grazing on the coral type, I mean on the algae that would overgrow the coral. So I think the trend is to create probably bigger exhibits, but fewer exhibits and reduction of the number of species based on that habitat. You talked about collecting animals.

Did the aquarium profession and did the Shedd depend on dealers for acquiring fish or unique species?

Yes. Dealers in the aquatic world are kind of few and far between, but you know, through the, the brotherhood of the aquariums, we identify this guy is great at collecting nurse sharks or this guy’s great at reef fishes or a specific type of fish. There were several individuals in the Keys, the Florida Keys that we worked with that were good, reliable people. We, we knew their reputation, we knew their methods. As a matter of fact, one of the places when I was down at the Keys, we went to visit their facility, they’re probably one of the leading ones in that they actually have their own trucks and they will drive animals collected in Florida all the way up to Chicago to guarantee, I shouldn’t say guarantee, but to give the animals the best chance of successful transport. And it’s a challenge moving aquatic animals. ’cause you need, there’s oxygen and temperature concerns and on and on, but especially if you go internationally, we have sent teams of Aquarius generally. We also include a water quality expert, but people that are scuba certified, that are conversant in various methods of collection, pulling a sane net along as shore, sometimes actually hook and line fishing, believe it or not, we’ll use barbless hooks and when you get an animal up, the hook slips easily outta their mouth and the animal does very well as opposed to having a hook lodged in their jaw. But by and large, we have worked with a lot of international individuals that we know are very good at collecting certain species.

I don’t think that we would ever have the collection that we have at chat aquaquarium without working with dealers. Many of those individuals have sought and some have attained, I not sure what the proper term is now. It used to be a commercial affiliate of a ZA. The bottom line is they get the a ZA stamp of approval because of their methods of collecting and methods of holding and transport and everything. So it’s in our best interest to work with those individuals and make sure that they’re doing things the way that we would want them done. In the old days, and I saw this in the Philippines one time on a trip in, we were working with New England Aquarium, people would dynamite reefs, which would stun fishes. A lot of times this was done just for food fish. But other times it, you know, obviously dynamite underwater is pretty percussive stun the animals and hope you get a few live ones that’ll survive, that you can sell to the aquarium trade.

And obviously that just destroys reefs. We were out in an area called the Ulu Sea, and we were anchored at a sea mount. It was a formation that had come up from 3000 feet and came to within about 40 feet of the surface so we could anchor there. There were some native Filipinos that came by and these long canoes, and they were there harvesting, tried tna clams for food, which I, I’m sure they’re protected now, I’m guessing they were then. But they just had racks and racks of the dried animal extracted from their shell hanging on their boats and it just wiping out that species on the reef. So, you know, there were a lot of less than desirable dealers out there, collectors. We, the aquarium community has actually had many attempts at working with communities from, well, various parts around the world, but ensuring that we know that the collection has been done sustainably, that the holding of the animals have done sustainably. The transport, trying to cti certify every individual along the, the path from collection in the wild to the place in the quarium.

Some people don’t wanna play ball and it’s probably because they can’t meet our standards, but we have identified individuals that are very reliable. If you’re going for a very unique animal, there’s precious few people. You might be best served doing it on your own, or you might find somebody that has a similar interest that has had some success. So, but yeah, working with dealers is critical to our collections In the aquarium profession. It’s, it’s changed greatly.

In the years that you’ve been in it and knowing what you know today, would you have entered the field when you did and would you enter it today and why?

Hmm. I would and I, I did then I, I’ve gotta say, when I first got the job at Quarium, I was, gosh, less than a half year outta grad school, not sure what I was gonna do. My dream was to work at an aquaculture facility and just wasn’t happening for me. And I, I ended up working at DeKalb Bag Research for a short while until a friend from grad school called me and said, Hey, I hear there’s a job at Shadow Aquarium, you should check it out. I was a first graduate of this master’s program called Aquarium Sciences, which was geared toward a lot of taxonomy but also learning aquatic animals, primarily fishes, Z geography, that type of thing.

And you know, like, well, what kind of job can you find in Chicago?

Something like that. Anyway, bottom line is I went to Shedd Aquarium, I interviewed, Shedd had taught part of the master’s program. There was, we would have field trips down to the aquaquarium to see various aspects of the operation. And we also had individuals come out to the university to talk about their responsibilities at the SHA Aquarium. So they had a vested interest. I was a first graduate of the program and they took me in and I tell you, within a week I was just like, oh my God, this is the best. I can’t believe how lucky I got. This is wonderful. And you know, had I focused on working in a public aquarium, that would’ve been one of the Ultimates Shedd was one of the biggest aquariums in the world. And it’s right in my hometown and it’s on Lake Michigan.

A beautiful view every day. So, you know, it was kind of opportunistic that I got the job at Shedd in the first place. And I would, I would definitely consider that if I was back at that age and knew that Corium was a possibility, I would definitely pursue it. My career was tremendously rewarding. I, I often say I can’t believe how fortunate I was. Not only did I love the job and the work experiencing all these different animals. I mean, I love learning and I love learning about, and it’s, it’s still today, it still goes on. But the travel opportunities I had, I went to places in the world.

I would never have gone on my own, you know, and it’s, to this day I’m just like, I can’t believe I got to go to da da da da da. And one of the interesting parts, and this is also true for the aquarium itself, but in the travels, the interesting part was meeting the people that live there and perhaps an extreme example, but when we were in Canada, either when we were acquiring beluga whales or we were participating in beluga whale research with some Canadian government officials, it was fun for me to get to know the crew that was working with us. And they were usually local Inuits or Cree Indians individuals that I would never meet otherwise. And it was interesting to get to know them and you realize how much alike we are yet, boy, they’re really different as far as this or that. We had, we ended up to the McKenzie River Delta, which enter exits into the Belfort Sea. So we were equivalent to the north slope of Alaska, but over in Canada. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is gonna be like spectacular. These guys have never seen the civilized world, Mr. Naive.

So you know, we’re taking flights successively smaller aircraft up there to the point that the last aircraft, we landed on the beach where we were gonna do our work and we get outta the plane, we’re offloading and then we meet the crew and three outta the nine individuals are wearing Chicago Bulls, t-shirts. I’m like, oh my gosh, so much for like naive, you know, it’s like unbelievable. And they were an interesting lot. I remember one individual who was a good worker hotheaded and found out three weeks after we broke camp, he was killed. He was, his throat was slit because he had some very jealous tendencies with his girlfriend. And it was, I said, God, it was like the wild west up there, you know, it’s just a whole different environment. So yes, I would encourage people to enter the aquarium world, the zoo world. Again, knowing that not gonna get rich, but you’re gonna be embelliShedd with tremendous experiences and hopefully love of your work.

And when people would ask me, you know, last day, so what are you gonna miss most when you leave chat aquarium?

I’m like, oh man, I don’t know the otters and belugas, you know, these fish. I said, you know what? I walked around my last few days and it, I realized I’m gonna miss the people. There are so many like-minded individuals that have the best intentions in mind. They’re compassionate and very, very caring toward the collection. And it’s, it’s just a wonderful, wonderful career.

Do you feel though it’s important for the curatorial staff to have you mentioned it, field experience?

I, you know, I don’t think it’s critical, but I can’t imagine not having it. To me, every time I would be in a wild environment, you know, working with whatever animals, it’s a chance to, if you will experience the environment and you know, if you’re scuba diving, obviously you can see what it looks like underwater. Such that if you’re gonna display these animals, when you get back to Chicago, you can say, okay, we gotta make it look like this and don’t forget, there’s gotta be C fans here and this kind of substrate. And so you get that direct experience. But it was, you know, maybe it’s just me, but I love the field work. That was probably my favorite part of the job. And there was a time we were up on the Wolf River in northeastern Wisconsin and we were working with an individual out of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee who was studying Lake Sturgeon. And the Lake sturgeon would go from Lake Winnebago, the largest in-State lake up to Green Bay.

And he had planted radio transmitters in them. Anyway, we’re out on the river and he’s got his antenna up and you know, we locate ’em and try and capture them and measure them and all that. At one point we took a break and one of his team members looked around and he said it was this vast wetland. He said, look around you this, this has never been settled. This is what it looked like when Marquette and Jolie came through here. This is the native habitat. I tell you, I had this overwhelming feeling of like, I belong here. This is, I had this calming effect and it was, you know, not a unique environment by any means, but it was, it was pristine, the water was clear, the environment looked very healthy.

And it was just a neat feeling to know that all is not lost. There are still good places around the world and the, the, I think experience in animals in a field, or at least the environments in which they come, would be a big part of, you know, any person, but certainly a curator’s role at the facility, getting to know where they came from.

Do you believe that a Aquarius in the profession or even younger curators are aware of and understand the history of the aquarium field?

And do you think that’s important?

There are those individuals that are zealots about the history. I, I’m thinking of a couple individuals at Sha Aquarium that collect memorabilia from, you know, the beginnings of SHA Aquarium or back to European aquariums. Very, very focused on the history and can certainly see the evolution. We used to have at the aquarium, a small side room called the balanced room. When it was, when the aquarium was first opened, it had an Asian motif and it was smaller aquariums, kind of home, aquarium size exhibits, not the larger ones in the major aquarium. And it was a, a nice example of what could be done on a smaller level. Turns out the Aquarius in that area was a wonderful tank decorator. He did a beautiful job.

A lot of people would go there to get ideas for their own home aquarium type of thing. But the ballots room had to do with the, the concept was we’re not gonna have any mechanical thing other than light keeping these animals alive. We’re gonna have natural plants in there with the natural light and not the natural lighting because it was dark, it was only artificial lighting, but artificial lighting, propagating the plants, generating oxygen, taking up seal to the bottom line is the exhibit’s gonna run on its own. It doesn’t need a pump or a filter or anything like that. Didn’t last real long. Number one, you can’t put a lot of animals in that because you need the turbulence at the surface for sure, for gas exchange. So anyway, nice idea didn’t work well and then we got into, you know, the pumps and the heaters and everything else goes with it. So it’s, it was a unique challenge and unfortunately that that whole area went away.

But the history, I gotta say, I would say for the large part, most aqua that I have known don’t really know a lot about the history of aquas or don’t speak about it or maybe just don’t care. They know where they are today. They know, you know, as a home hobbyist, like I was, you know what I had to go through and you realize, oh man, this new pump is so much better. It’s more efficient, it’s, you know, da da da. So there’s a progression probably in one’s own personal experience. But as far as going back to history of say the 18 hundreds, it’s probably limited. But I will say there is tremendous interest when you show, say the New York Aquarium, which is one of the original aquariums and you know, what they had to do to collect in Bebe’s Bathysphere where it went down to the depths, you know, they had that on exhibit. So there’s cool aspects of it.

But I would say by and large the history is of nominal interest to most aquarists unfortunately. But it is.

What was, what was the most important piece of advice you received that has stayed with you throughout your career?

Ah, gosh, probably, probably keeping an open mind, which I guess pertains to just about any job I would think. But it’s being receptive to new things. Female aquas. I mean, I remember when the first female aquas came to the Shedd and there was a lot of, oh yeah, well see how this works out. You know, she’s not strong enough, you know, whatever, being receptive to different ideas. And to me, I always encouraged aqua and trainers, but aqua mostly ’cause they directly were involved with the appearance and the design of their exhibits. But coming up with different ideas. We could do this, you know, this animal would benefit by having this.

And sometimes it’s like, yeah, but how are you gonna achieve that in this small space?

You know, come back to me, you know, if we can make it happen, let’s, let’s go toward that. Some people would love to have deep sea fishes.

Okay, how are you going to maintain the heavy pressure that these guys would experience in the wild?

And there were attempts at this with small aquariums that were pressurized.

It’s like, okay, well how do you get in there to feed them if it’s a closed chamber type of thing, how do you feed them?

How do you clean it? And there were all kinds of challenges that way. It’s, you know, I think, I know the open-minded nature of the job is what yields success. It’s like if you are receptive to new ideas and you know, you’re not only supporting someone’s interest, hopefully, as opposed to like, oh God, no, that’s not gonna work. Go back and clean your tanks. Which is kind of the feeling I got from certain individuals when I first started at the aquarium. It’s, it’s being open and receptive to individuals. And now these days with diversity and inclusion and accessibility, that’s a whole different thing. And you have to be open-minded to here’s what we have to do now.

And you know, we’ve even talked about braille interpretation of exhibits. I’m like, yeah, but they can’t see the exhibits. Yeah, but there’s somebody with them that can describe the animals and they can read a little bit about it. And I’m like, oh, never thought about that. Or something else. The aquarium and others have facilitated recently is having quiet times for, say, children with autism, for instance. It’s a time when we will actually dim the lights, try and limit the audience and advertise that here’s a good time for you to come to the Aquaquarium if you’d like. Just a silly example. But I remember I was in a, one of the public washroom and I went to dry my hands under the dryer, one of these high powered things that whines tremendously loud.

Right before I went there, I saw a father come in with a young child and this kid started screaming when I was under the dryer and I pulled back ’cause I thought, oh my gosh. And I’m like, apologizing, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. And he says, ah, no problem, no problem. But there are individuals that have challenges and you know, again, being aware of them and being accommodating. So I think, you know, the open mind nature of things is something that will benefit anyone.

You talked about conservation, but what kind of conservation programs do you believe an aquaquarium should be involved with today that is involving what the wildlife conservation nationally or internationally?

Part of the, the conservation work that I favor on any scale is kind of the preservation of habitat. You know, and I’m sure this happens in all over the country, but invasive species is a big deal, certainly with aquatic animals, but also with plants. But you know, there are legions of people that volunteer to work out in the field to try to restore an environment to what it used to be type of thing. Which is monumental and it seems like unachievable. But yet you see examples of where certain invasive species have been eliminated and natural representation of plants have come back. The, on the international scale it could be applied to, you know, reducing pollution. And again, as an aquarium education being a foremost part of our mission is informing people about why it’s important you don’t use these plastic bags. Why it’s important that you try to say no to plastic straws.

Matter of fact, we had a program at Shedd ko called Shedd the Straw. They had a number, I don’t know where this came from, but they said there’s upwards of 500 million plastic straws used every single day in the United States. Think about it, you get a cocktail and there’s a plastic straw or two in there, you get a a soda, there’s a plastic straw in there. The plastic, it’s just one part of the plastic pollution in the world. But I think addressing the pollution and how environments have changed and hopefully our conservation work in helping to restore those or to at least minimize the impact, the negative impact we’re having on the environment is very important. Another thing that we do in zoos and aquariums is the conservation breeding. And again, it’s like, okay, you breed these animals.

Is it for the purpose of putting them back in the wild or do you want ’em for your collection?

I would say it’s more the latter. There’s very few areas where you’re likely to put an animal back into the wild and it’s gonna do well because it’s never experienced that environment. In the news recently, there was a beluga whale that showed up in Norway on its own. They’re not naturally found around there. And of course it’s swimming up to boats, it’s approaching people. And by the way, it’s wearing a harness. It was thought to be, I dunno if there’s any value to this, but it was thought to be a, a Russian spy animal, you could put a camera on the harness or anything. The animal unfortunately ended up dying.

But the idea of them approaching people in boats is not a good thing. Witness down in Florida, Dr. Randy Wells’ work in Sarasota Bay, how many times they find animals dead that have ingested things, that fishing hooks, things that are injurious to their health. The, the, I’m way off in left field on this, but the, the bottom line is if animals have been propagated in our facilities, putting ’em back in the wild is not necessarily in their best interest. And you may not be able to find the environment that will support that animal. Again, degradation of habitat, pollution, whatever. And, you know, it, it’s, it’s kind of, you know, people, you know, come across like a squirrel that they trap or whatever in their backyard and wanna release it to the forest preserve. It’s like not a good idea because there’s already a representation of animals there.

This poor guy doesn’t know this environment and is gonna be confused and most likely picked off by a predator probably in a day or two. So the born, born free philosophy sounds good, was great in the movie, but it doesn’t really work as putting animals back in the natural environment. I would say it’s more to support our collections in zoos and aquariums and to detract from our extraction from the wild.

And does, do aquariums have sister aquarium relationships?

Yes, yes. Generally US facilities that I’m aware of are Sister Aquariums in Europe and probably Japan most commonly. A lot of interest on, in both geographic areas in fishes and zoos and aquariums and that type of thing. And then, you know, when you say like a sister facility, it may not be as specific as the sister city thing. Like when you come in at O’Hare Airport and you know, all these cities internationally, our sister cities to Chicago. It’s a, it’s a good concept, but it’s, it’s more the personal relationship. You deal, you create, I should say, with another aquarium in that you might find that, well we have like goals for raising certain types of fishes. One that was international and did real well was project seahorse.

Seahorses in many cases are in a tough way because the environment’s not what it should be. And there was a lot of international effort at not only China to propagate them so we don’t have to extract them from the wild. But also talking to local communities that are perhaps overfishing them for the curio business, Chinese medicine, whatever. To the point that they actually started working in this case with the Philippines, with creating marine protected areas. Basically saying if you guys can stop fishing in this big area offshore from your village and maybe go a little further afield, you’re gonna realize tremendous success. Because they found in studies that if you leave the area to its own devices, the population comes back and often comes back so strongly that it spills into adjoining communities. So it it comes down to regulation. Yeah, of extraction.

I mean it’s, you know, the classic example of food fish that I think of as orange ruffy, when they first came on the scene, it was like, oh my gosh, this fish is delicious. And the community just went crazy collecting, you know, the commercial fisheries collecting these animals. ’cause the market could bear, you know, a great price for these things. They virtually wiped them out in their native habitat and they’re a deep water animal. So it took a lot of effort for the commercial fishers to get these. But the profits they were realizing was pretty tremendous. It’s, it’s like, okay, finally when the realization came out that hey, you’re overfishing this area, okay, now we gotta regulate it. Now we gotta say stop, slow down, whatever.

And you know, as far as working with other facilities, that becomes more of an international effort, which is more successful I think. So The Shedd has, with design the Shedd has had a number of what I’d call temporary exhibits that have lasted a long time frog seahorses.

What is the advantage of that?

And then what happens afterward to these animals?

Yep. The special exhibits was, gosh, highly successful. And it didn’t always originally deal with live animals with, that’s the trend we went to, to the point that it was live animals. Our point in doing it was to highlight a certain group of animals like frogs. And you could talk about all the messages and how various populations are in tough shape in the wild. Again, pollution, environmental degradation, there’s a variety of reasons, but we would often strive to not only give a great representation of frogs around the world, but also get some oddball species, if you will. The Goliath frog. I mean, it’s huge. It’s, it’s certainly a novelty and people were very interested in that type of thing. Anytime you can get that level of interest, it’s so much easier to put out your educational messages, your conservation messages.

I remember we had a lizards exhibit, we had a, a monitor lizard and Komodo dragon was on loan to us, big animal.

A lot of people are like, wow, you know, what’s that doing here at an aquarium?

It’s like, well it’s, you know, part of our special exhibits we’re highlighting this animal group and we’d like you to get more familiar with them. The, the, the bottom line is once the exhibit came down, and it was usually two years, was the run that we would allocate. The seahorse one we did, by the way, was so successful that one went, I think six years before we said we, we should change it out. Most of the animals we acquired were on loan to us. Many were from our own collection. So it wasn’t a big deal, you know, putting them back in the exhibits they came from or returning them to the aquariums from which we got them.

So Do you feel that the role of the curator has changed from when you started?

Yes, tremendously. The sophistication of the job, I think is grown by leaps and bounds. Back in the day. It was important to get to know the animals, of course, know their taxonomy, you know, do a decent job of exhibiting them. I don’t think there was a tremendous amount of interrelational interactions, you know, with other aquariums. There was to some degree and usually some of the other larger ones, larger aquariums. But it was, it was my feeling, it was, it was more insular to shatter aquaquarium and it was basically keep the fish alive and when we need more fish, we gotta go collect them ourselves or the few dealers that were available at the time.

It’s grown to the point that not only is the natural history important, but certainly the environment from which the animals come and how do we best represent that?

Because we wanna educate our public about where these animals live and what are the threats to their continued existence or to their habitat type of thing. Again, the record keeping that has been generated through a ZA animal record keeping systems, pretty sophisticated conservation breeding programs. There’s all these things with which the curator should not only be a direct part of but at the least has to be conversant with should understand it. You may have an Aquarius that says, yeah, you know, I’d like to be the stud bookkeeper for this species here and you know, I’ll keep you informed, but I’ll, I’ll be the lead in this, you know, I’ll be the one representing shadow aquarium and I’ll be the one that, you know, can come back to you and say, Hey, you know, we should look at acquiring this species. Or you know what, this species is somewhat common and everybody’s got ’em. We don’t really need them. You know, maybe we deescalate this species in our population making those type of calls. But the, I think the variety of responsibilities has grown tremendously today for a curator. And then again, getting back to the legislative and regulatory arena, it’s in your best interest to be conversant with those people that might have oversight of your collection or your collecting methods or whatever.

It’s, it was always interesting working with politicians because when they would have a summer break or whatever and we’d invite them down to the aquaquarium to see what we’re doing, many times they’d come down with a number of their staff members, you know, young individuals coming up in the field for them. They were just like little kids. I mean, they were just enthralled with what we were doing and, and would listen to us. And we really solidified relationships with individuals that way to the point that if we had to approach ’em on the hill about some piece of legislation or a regulation, they were very receptive to us. I think, you know, again, I think it’s just the sophistication and diversity of responsibilities that has generated today’s successful curator. When critics say aquariums do not allow fish to express, express the full range of their natural behaviors. You say what My first word is baloney. I think that, you know, it depends on the species.

Of course, if we were to try to bring in blue fin tuna, it would be impossible. It’s a fast swimming open ocean fish, they don’t know the confines of an exhibit. There have been attempts to bring in smaller species of tuna that often would ram into the walls of sides, the sides of their exhibit, and stun themselves and eventually die. You can, you can do well with small individuals ’cause they school up and they form a school that moves. But as they get larger, none of our exhibits is large enough. And so, and we recognize that, you know, and you can build to a certain size, but there are limiting factors as far as, you know, you’re not gonna bring a gray whale in, for instance. The, the, the direction I think is, boy, I think it’s limited by your resources for sure. Whether it be space or food availability.

Some animals are very specific as far as what, what they want to eat. Qua bears, for instance, when we had the project seahorse collection, our special exhibit, I remember many of our aquarium colleagues saying, oh, good luck with that. We can feed ’em nothing but Brian Shrimp. ’cause that’s what people fed him at that time. That was all that was available that we took that as a challenge and greatly diversified our live food collection to the point that it’s a huge area now that has a good sized staff. And we are now able to produce a, a great number of, it’s actually food animals for smaller fishes in, in generally I would say. But we also will grow up almost microscopic, barely macroscopic animals that might be needed for filter feeding animals like corals, for instance. So I’m off in left field again, but I, I guess that’s, that’s what I wanted to say on that.

You talked about tup.

Have there not been exhibits that have been circular that allow tuna to keep fish, keep swimming There?

The Monterey Aquarium has done a good job with smaller tuna. They do get to the point that they become problematic and that they may become predatory on smaller animals sometimes. And the interesting way that Monterey alleviated this, they had animals, they fast swim and boom, they smack into the glass stun themselves and they’re dead. They created a bubble wall. They just put a air diffuser along the bottom of the glass and the animals see that as an impenetrable barrier, they avoid it. So I thought, well, that, that works out pretty well. Steinhardt Aquarium, back in the day, John Koker wanted to be the first to exhibit great white sharks. So he had a large circular exhibit and he would work with local fishers.

And when they brought in smaller great white sharks, he would bring them into the exhibit and they would have this constant swimming pattern, which was good until, the way I heard it. I’m not sure if this is the actual reason they got rid of the great white sharks, but there were slight electrical field leaks into the water, which was very disruptive to the sharks. They have a very high sensitivity to electrical fields. Matter of fact, some sharks find their prey in the bottom that way. They detect electrical fields given off by prey items. So anyway, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has taken up, and I think they’re still doing this, bringing in smaller great whites in their largest exhibit. But they acknowledge that once they get to a certain size, they gotta be put back in the wild.

And again, to your question of like, how do they do?

Well, they do try to monitor them. They’ll put a transmitter on which lasts for X number of months before the battery dies. But when they become too large, you have to put ’em back in the wild and they’ll go to the place from which the animal is collected and hope for the best. But as you probably know, great whites, like many sharks are migratory. So, you know, you hope that they join a group of other great white sharks and live happily ever after. But you don’t always know that. So Now there was, in 2013 the documentary called Blackfish.

What it effect did that have within the aquarium profession?

Yeah, Blackfish was, boy, it’s a tough documentary to watch. It had to do with killer whales. It’s specifically SeaWorld.

And we try to always work together whenever we have say a controversial issue such that, you know, we would talk with SeaWorld people and ask them, you know, what messaging are you getting out?

What are you, how are you addressing this?

So that when we get approached with a question like you just asked me, you know, what is okay for us to say to you?

The reality is this animal killed several individuals, the tillicum, the major whale in the documentary. And you know, people have come up with many reasons. It’s, you know, it’s a large male, it’s naturally aggressive. It happens to be an aggressive animal. The, the space it was kept in is too small. Trainers didn’t recognize signs of aggression, whatever. It was a, a real alarm. And, and not so much, well, aquarium.

An aquarium in that you have marine mammals. Yeah, you may have an oceanarium component or even maybe a zoo that has marine mammals.

There was a lot of heat that was generated as far as, wow, do you think they’re doing the right thing?

Is that, should they even have an animal that large, these animals swim for miles every day. How can they swim? This small concrete bathtub that was a common term, used a facility like SeaWorld has had tremendous success with killer whales breeding them and maintaining them. This was kind of an outlier situation that was unfortunately magnified tremendously to the point that all of us went to some degree on the defensive. We had to support our fellow aquarium.

But the challenge was, well, do you think that’s correct?

And, you know, should we be doing this?

And by and large we felt yes. You know, if we’re following government mandates as far as the size and the water quality and everything size of the exhibitry, it’s okay. There’s a lot of people that just become endeared to these animals. And it could be fish as well. I remember a woman that was endeared to some turtles she donated. There are those people that will say, it’s never never gonna be correct. It’s never right and you should never do that. And I think, you know, having that closed-mindedness will not allow some people to experience these animals.

Again, in my field work, I’ve had tremendous exposure to animals in the wild, including killer whales several times. And it’s just, it takes your breath away. One time we were out on Monterey Bay and we came across the sperm whale, and I’m with, I’m brand new to the field, but we have individuals that have been in the marine mammal community for 20, 25 years. They were as excited as I was about seeing the sperm whale and following it at a distance until it sounded and dove down. And it’s, it’s that exposure to animals that think about Chicago.

How many people will get to see a beluga whale in the wild or a killer whale in the wild?

There are people that have never been to the ocean, period. I’ve read of people that live in the city that have never seen Lake Michigan, which I can’t believe, but it’s a, it’s getting to know the animals. Excuse me.

Can you, can you talk about your views regarding the hot topic of aquariums maintaining killer whales in their collections?

Yes, unique animal, tremendously popular. They are a such a large animal that unless you’re able to provide them a really large exhibit would probably be best left away from our collections. What’s too large, what’s too small is up to anybody’s opinion. I guess. Again, there’s USDA regulations that you must provide this depth, this size, this volume of water. I think the public perception, and probably more so now than when I was working, is such that you shouldn’t have these animals here. But then again, I watch that’s been to SeaWorld numerous times, how much people love seeing these animals, how much they love being splaShedd by these animals. I think I would never say no, I would never say no to bringing these animals into an adequately sized exhibit, but you gotta have the resources, the filtration alone would be tremendously expensive. The diet, I mean these guys, those that are what they call resident orcas are eating salmon, whole big, whole salmon.

It’s like, it takes a lot of food for an animal that’s 10,000 pounds or whatever. So if you have the resources, if you’re able to allocate the, the staff, I would say go for it. There’s precious few people that would even entertain the idea. But I think the animal is such a spectacular animal and one that most people will never get to see in the wild. That the benefit of seeing one in a properly designed exhibit would be, would be a good thing. Another question about the Shedd.

Did the Shedd have a travel program?

And if so, what were they trying to teach people?

Yes, the Shedd Aquarium has a very active travel program. We usually work with, you know, tour operators. Occasionally we have run our own trips. For instance, we have taken groups to The Bahamas where we have several conservation research scientists doing work over there. On the other hand, I’ve been fortunate enough to lead Shedd trips to various places where, again, we will work with a local tour operator. What we’re trying to do is expose our public to different environments. I mean places that definitely don’t look like Chicago, but something that would be unique. But, and certainly that hopefully you get to see animals in those environments that are something you may have seen in a zoo or aquarium, but maybe not likely.

It’s, to me, it’s the immersive experience of being there. And if I may, one thing that, you know, I thought, ah, I’m, I’m pretty familiar with wherever we’re going. We were doing a night hike in Belize and going into a jungle area, had a big opening and then there was a path and everything and we all had flashlights, but three of us had headlamps. And I was one of the head the headlamp and I was starting to venture into the area and I stopped. I’m like, wow, look at those colors.

And people are like, what, what, what?

And I realized it was important to have the light up here, not down here. So for those of us that had the headlamp, we could actually see sapphire blue and emerald green that was gorgeous all around the opening and what we were seeing in reflections of spider’s eyes. It was fantastic. And I would never have dreamed I would see something like that. So, you know, it’s that opportunity to share with people. Another classic was our videographer at Shedd wanted to take a trip up to Northern Vancouver Island to see killer whales.

And she said, Hey, do I want to come along and be the naturalist?

I’m like, oh my God, I’d love it. So we took a group up there of photographers and it’s, there’s an area called Robson bite, which is noted for the presence of killer whales. There were so many, I mean all sizes. I, I remember buying a long lens in my camera. The whales were so close to our boat, I couldn’t focus on ’em with my long lens. And the second day we’re on the water.

I had a photographer come up to me and goes, are we gonna see anything besides killer whales?

I said, well, that was the intent of the trip, but also consider they’re a top predator.

If you’re a seal or sea lion, would you be hanging around this area with all these killer whales here?

So he is like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’d seen killer whales, certainly at SeaWorld and other places. But seeing them in that, that numerous, that, that many was just fantastic. And in the wild, the Robson bite area by the way, is they was observed that the whales like to rub. There’s a bed of rocks at a shallow depth and animals like to rub on that and probably feels good. But it might also be if they had a parasite attached, might be a way of dislodging it, whatever. But just to see ’em swimming around you everywhere was just, I mean I get excited still. And that was probably 30 years ago. So Aquariums now have started to move away from just exhibiting fish and marine mammals, but have now started to do more terrestrial mammals.

Yes. And birds. Why has this happened?

Why is this trend popular? What’s the point?

I think you identified it. It’s a trend that those of us that have dealt with the animal collections realize that, you know, these fish don’t live in a vacuum. There’s other animals, terrestrial or aquatic that we’re not showing. And maybe we need to enlarge the exhibit and create a terrestrial portion to it as well, which we did in a big way with our Amazon exhibit. And we actually told the story of how the animals and people survive in the Amazon where it rises and falls as much as 20 or 30 feet in some areas.

How the heck do you live if the water comes up into the forest and goes for miles into the forest?

How do you live in that environment?

But the cool thing was being able to show so many different terrestrial animals that you wouldn’t expect to see it in aquarium. For sure. And I remember some of the classics were, we had bullet ants, a good story about a sloth I’ll share with you. But it was a unique opportunity for us to not only enrich the Aquarius profession, you know, they had to become familiar with these and you know, we knew certain individuals might be, might have had experience working with a certain group of animals or had a strong interest or just knew them well. But the important thing was that it was the, the trend is toward showing the complete environment as much as you can. I mean like taking a, a cut out of the world’s environment and saying, boom, here’s what you might encounter in the Amazon. Our strong suit is still the aquatic portion of it and the interpretation there. But we made a, a sincere effort to get, you know, natural plants from the Amazon and animals that you’d find in certain parts of the Amazon. And then to tell the story again, conservation education, big components of the exhibits.

So this sloth, if I may, we had a sloth and it was gonna go on a certain part of the exhibit and we were having a hard time adjusting the humidity and temperature because it was open to the gallery. The windows only came up partially and we just couldn’t get it right. And the, our facility staff kept trying to adjust it and everything. And the gala, one of the Shedd galas was going to have the opening of the Amazon exhibit. First time, you’re gonna be the first one to see this. And there was a individual, he was curator of fishes at the time, which included the terrestrial animals. And he called me at home the day of the gala and said, I’m not putting a sloth on exhibit. And he starts swearing.

He says, the guys can’t get the temperature right and the humidity’s too low on this and that. And kept going on and on. I said, you know what, if it’s not right, don’t put ’em on. Don’t worry about it. Most people wouldn’t notice it anyway, don’t worry about it. He said, I’m not doing it, I’m not.

I said, it’s okay, it’s okay. And I said, you know what?

I remember being down in education this past week and somebody had a real life size looking stuffed animal of a sloth.

Why don’t you get that and put it in the exhibit?

I said, tongue in cheek. So sure enough, my wife and I come up to the opening of the exhibit and there’s the director and his wife and you know, I’m director of collections at that point. And he says, Hey, exhibit looks great. And man, that sloth is really cool. I’m like, oh. So we go walking down the gallery and I’m looking and I’m like, oh my God, there it is.

And the soft doesn’t move much anyway. Right?

And I told my wife and she goes, oh wow, that looks great.

I said, it’s not real. She said, what?

I said, it’s a stuffed animal. And I told her this story. So the whole weekend I like, oh man, I gotta go into the director Monday and come clean. I gotta tell him this story. And I went in there and I told him and he laughed. He goes, yeah, I, I found out, I found out. And his wife happened to be there. And she said, yeah. And the funny part was he told a couple guests that he actually saw it move. So anyway, it’s, it was something that we never really pursued because of the open air nature. We couldn’t control the humidity that required in the temperature.

So it’s unfortunate. But you find more and more aquariums are doing this. Yes, yes. I think not all of them, I’m thinking some of the major ones that have the resources to do this. I think, you know, again, it’s as you said, a trend that people want to do more representation of what you might see in the wild. The strong suit for an aquarium is always gonna be the aquatic stuff. But there are those that will show, you know, as best they can, what the entire environment might look like.

So What are some of the most dramatic or important changes that you’ve witnessed in animal management within the aquarium field?

Certainly the husbandry has become much more sophisticated. Again, going back to the simple diets that we used to feed the fishes was, you know, when you first start out as an Aquarius, you feel, wow, they must know what they’re doing. You know, horse heart, cho chow smelt and you know, over time realize, boy, that’s just not adequate. And it often would be manifested in the appearance of the animals.

Yes, they got food, they got caloric value, but their colors wouldn’t be as vibrant or maybe their behavior’s off a little bit to the point that we said, you know what?

We need to diversify their diet. And we did as best we can in, in many areas today, again, all the food that that we buy is human quality. So shrimp, squid, mackerel, herring, smelt, capland, whatever we’re feeding these animals is the same thing you would eat if you bought it in a restaurant. So the husbandry has become very important. The other thing that I am really impressed with is a veterinary care. Again, back when I started inverts, invertebrates were just kind of like, eh, do the best you can. You’d see a sea star with its arms starting to waste away. I’m like, oh, try and isolate a parasite or bacteria.

You found nothing. It’s like, I don’t know, it must be metabolic or you know, it’s missing something. We don’t know what. So, you know, back then it’s like, well, you know, take it out and we’ll put a fresh one in there and hope it does better. The, the I used to go to, when I became curator of marine mammals ended up going to different marine mammal groups, including the Society for Marine Mamm Biology and the International Association Association of Aquatic Animal Medicine.

I go there first time I’m like, what am I doing here?

These are all veterinarians. But it was interesting, it was a great opportunity for me to meet some of the veterinarians in the field, but also to hear their areas of study. And there were people that were getting into the study of fish medicine in a big way. And then that followed with the study of invertebrates. I’m not up on it, but I would guess the study of invertebrate medicine is probably way behind the study of fish medicine right now. But fish medicine has really gone leaps and bounds. So beyond the husbandry, there’s also the veterinary care to some degree as well. The, the marine mammal trainers working with Aquarius, getting them to train certain animals for which we might need more regular health assessments.

And that might otherwise be difficult to access the common snapping turtle where we actually got it to crawl out onto a scale and get regular weights and if you need it, you get a jaw blood sample right then and there. I, I think those primarily were the, the major improvements I’ve seen. Again, of course creating the more natural exhibit appearance experience for both the animals and the humans is a big part of the growth of our community. We’ll start with that one question.

What would you say to those who still believe that aquariums are nothing more than places where they keep fish and tanks?

I would say bologna. If, if they happen to take the time to go to a current aquaquarium, they’re gonna see a tremendous amount of high class displays of animals you probably would not otherwise see. But also the fact that it’s giving a lot more information than they traditional older aquarium. As far as conservation habitat, natural history of the animals, I think, you know, people probably go to aquarium or a zoo mostly because of the entertainment value of it. China Sea, unusual animals or big animals or whatever. But there are those that are actually interested in seeing what the collection is and learning a lot more about them. And probably if successful end up taking classes or go on trips with that facility to learn more and become more immersed in a specific habitat or a group of animals or whatever. So the traditional aquarium, I’m sure there is exceptions, but the traditional aquarium to my mind is no longer around.

What issues caused you the most concerned during your career and how do you see the future regarding those concerns?

I guess the biggest concern was the negative perception that predominantly animal activists try to paint about the collection we have. And the thing that really hit home for me was the accusation that we don’t care about the animals. We’re just in it for the money. Number one, shatter aquarium’s nonprofit. And the other thing is, if you had the opportunity to work with these people and see the compassion they have and the dedication, you would realize that that is just totally a classless accusation. I remember when we had to do fire drills for the new oceanarium and I had one trainer, we were talking about this and you know, going through various steps we’d have to take as far as evacuating the building and everything. And he says, I’m not leaving a belugas. I’m, I said, Pete, you, you’d have to go.

You would, no, no, I’m, I’m, I’ll jump in the tank. I’m not gonna leave them. I said, you might be overcome by smoke, for instance. You know, I said, they’re in water, they’re probably gonna be okay. But he was adamant that he’s not gonna leave the animals. And I’m like, okay, A little bit stupid. But the dedication, there was a time I remember we had a very unfortunate situation where we lost a couple of belugas and I remember people just hugging the animal hoping that, you know, almost as if it’s gonna come back type of thing. The the degree of dedication is manifest everywhere. If you’re not dedicated to that line of work, you’re not gonna last long ’cause you’re not making a lot of money, quite frankly.

And it’s the, the, the many opportunities to learn and to care for this great variety of animals, to my mind is a huge reward. Yeah, I mean you see the future with animal activists for aquariums being less now or, or continuing to be more. And That’s, that’s a great question because to, to answer you honestly, I’m not really sure where we are with that. I know there was the heyday in the late eighties into the nineties, various individuals became prominent in the activist community. Our lead guy ended up leaving us, if you will, our lead activist. He ended up getting into challenging rodeos for their accrual treatment of animals there.

And I thought, wow, why did he go to that direction?

It seemed like he wasn’t getting any further ground with his activism or demands that we released the animals type of thing. So my sense, because you know, following the media and whatever, I, I just don’t hear about it as much as I used to. I think it’s probably always there. I like to feel that these people’s hearts are in the right place. You know, if they care about the animals, they’re compassionate, but they just maybe just under do not understand what we’re doing and the level of care that we provide these animals. And you know, the benefit again to say people of Chicago or all the tourists that come to see us that they get from seeing this tremendous collection of animals that they probably otherwise would never experience maybe in a book. But nothing like seeing the real thing. And you’ve worked with a lot of curators, you’ve worked under some directors.

What would your advice be to these people today about what their job is and how they should be doing it?

Ooh, I guess, you know, my first inclination is I won’t give them advice unless asked, but the fact is that they have to be more global in their perspective. You know, a collection like Shedds is, you know, globally important anyway. But the bottom line is to be more aware of things beyond the animal collection itself. Things that might impact the animals I’ve spoke before about, you know, working with legislators or regulators or at least getting to know them, working with the media as appropriate. I think you need to again, be open-minded about guaranteeing the success of your collection. And part of that is sharing it with outside resources that can further spread the word influences. For instance, we’ve had influencers come into quarium to see various exhibits or animals and whatnot. The other thing is to really develop and trust your staff.

The level of technology, the level of expertise is greatly expanded since I was there, especially in the beginning days. To the point that you gotta be at least conversant with the record keeping system, for instance, or the stud book, various stud books that are appropriate to your collection and understand your level of involvement. You know, you may just be a holding facility for animals. You may not be asked to breed them or anything, but there’s all different permutations and one must become familiar with what’s out there, what’s available, how can we best utilize our collection in furthering conservation programming and education. The other thing, because I was a member of it, the accreditation commission is a wonderful asset of she aquarium and of the whole zoo aquarium community that are members. We get examined every five years and it’s very thorough. And I always try to advocate to our staff when we are getting ready. I said, you know, they’re not coming here to try and punish us and say, you know, this is wrong, this is wrong.

This is more of a learning experience. We’re coming here, we should be cognizant of the fact that here’s what the standards are and when they come to inspect us, we better be meeting ’em or exceeding them. It’s a wonderful opportunity to basically clean up your closet and show your best face forward. And the standards have continually grown over the years to the point that, you know, the common duration of an ex inspection is probably two and a half to three days, bigger facilities even more than that.

But you’re getting a thorough inspection about all aspects of the aquarium operations and are you still doing a good job?

So that is something else that I think a curator certainly should be aware of and utilize the accreditation standards to make sure your programs are up to sn or better.

And, and speaking about beyond, what should aquariums be doing to prepare for the future?

And do you have any thoughts of what aquariums will look like In The future?

Well, again, I always think of the resources needed for aquariums going forward. I think whether they’re a, a government entity or a private society, or some cases an individual or two donate a huge amount of money to develop a first class aquarium. The resources are needed and not only for the initial building and outfitting, which is tremendous, but also going forward, you must have continued guaranteed resources. It’s tough if you’re part of the city budget and the city’s budget is not giving you the money you need going forward, you you have to have that or you’re not gonna meet the standards of accreditation, you’re not going to be able to provide the animals with the care that they need. I was working with a, a small aquarium as a mentor and in short order I realized they just don’t have the horses to make it go and become an the an a ZA facility. They had been one, they declined further membership because the city’s budget wasn’t able to meet their needs. They were trying to come back to the fold and on multiple inspections and requesting, you know, documents, accreditation, there’s a lot of documentation you have to provide. It came down to, I don’t think they were adequately staffed and what, and adequate staffing is obviously a major concern, but also how does it play into things like life support, you know, things that you need to run a first class aquarium and be one of the best.

So I think going forward, I, I think the bank of people that would wanna work in animal husbandry will always be there or can be developed. But to me it always comes down to the resources that you have to not only establish a, a first class facility, but to continue going forward. You have to, I wanna say, have guaranteed money, which there’s never a guarantee on this, but you must identify your needs and hopefully meet them. So you had mentioned that there are public and private aquariums, Private Being owned by individuals or organizations, She aquarium society.

But are there private aquariums that are owned by individuals or corporations?

And if so, do they have a, the Shedd aquarium will be here for a long time, but if there are private aquariums that are, are good, do they have a long shelf life to continue the good things they’re doing? If there are Yeah, good question. They hopefully go into this with eyes wide, eyes wide open and realize that, you know, we’re not just here for 20 years. We’re gonna need to go forward. And usually people wanna expand their facilities, increase their collection, whatever. I, I, I’m thinking of one major aquarium that was founded by two individuals that basically banked the establishment of that and then had money put aside going forward. So you could always rely on a dependable budget. A larger facility I think is probably going to do well. And when individuals develop a private aquarium, they’re usually gonna set up a, a foundation, something that’s going to govern that aquarium going forward.

’cause that individual may pass away. They may say, Hey, I’ve made my mark, I’m moving on. But there’s usually a, a foundation or a society, board of governors, whatever, that will help oversee the continued operation of that aquarium. And it’s incumbent upon those individuals to probably not only donate money themselves, but to facilitate bringing in other donors, corporate donors, individuals, whatever. Smaller aquariums would probably have a challenge. That way if an individual is responsible for the establishment and running of the aquarium for 20 years, but then decides, eh, I don’t care anymore.

Where do you then go for your resources?

You know, you, you have to have plans going well into the future to keep a, a place going, especially a smaller one. So you are in charge of a major aquarium.

What issues would you like to see that aquarium address in the future?

I guess the, the important thing is that it be viewed as a, a treasure of the community, if you will, something that the community supports. Community support to my mind is a huge part of the success of any of these aquariums, zoos, whatever. Without that, I can’t imagine you’re gonna do very well and community support would mean not only individuals that come to visit and maybe become members, but also the corporate world, the business people, the people that can donate larger sums of money and help facilitate further growth or continued operations, successful continued operations. It’s hard to donate a large sum of money to say the water filtration system. ’cause nobody sees it. You can talk about it and say, you know, we have state of the art to like, well so do all these other guys. But it’s a critical component of the aquarium. So it’s, I think going forward, the resources of not only, you know, financial resources, but the bigger thing is that community support and hopefully generating a larger audience.

And part of that has to be more than just the display of need animals. The education component is huge. Conservation involvement, even small aquariums can get involved in national or international conservation programs. So there are a lot of opportunities out there, but you cannot be confined to your local community. I think you need to look larger and expand your horizons as far as your, your hope for the future. There have been many aquariums that have been built in areas to try and anchor a waterfront or something. Yeah. Seems to be something that is done.

Can you comment on that? Is that a plus? A minus?

Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it’s a, I think it’s a neat, neat idea. Number one, you’re, you are probably helping contribute to the successful development of that riverfront area. I, I think of Detroit and the bad reputation it’s had yet they don’t have an aquarium right on the river, but they’ve done a great amount of development there. It’s a, it’s a beginning having a successful aquarium. And I can think of several right off hand where they have become an integral part of that local community. A matter of fact, probably a focal area of visitation, which, you know, you have people coming to see the aquarium like, Hey, let’s go out and grab dinner. Or, oh, I hear there’s a good musical act at this place down the street. Let’s go there. It helps draw people to that area and infuse monetary benefits to that community.

The, the thing is that to do that you need to be one of the best. You need to really show your best foot forward. Many would probably have a tendency to focus on local animals, but I, I know from past examples that you realize, ah, that alone’s not gonna sell it. We need to bring in something else that’s a greater attraction. Make the story of, oh, here’s a trip from the Mississippi River down to the Gulf of Mexico. If you show just the headwaters of the Mississippi, it’s like, yeah, it’s okay. The fish aren’t overly interesting. But if we talk about the path down to the Gulf of Mexico and then we have this Gulf of Mexico component to it, you’ve expanded and you’ve been able to talk more about the environment, what it means to have runoff from all the agricultural fields feeding into the Mississippi, how that impacts the Gulf of Mexico, the creation of dead zones.

There’s a lot of different components depending on your areas of focus that you can highlight with, you know, not a large aquarium Aquariums you, you’ve mentioned do things in conservation, education, research.

Are any of these aspects, in your opinion, more important for them to be leaders in?

Boy, I would say probably they, they’ve gotta be equally weighted. Certainly education should be central to any facility. Again, it’s neat to come and see the animals, but hey, let me, let me inject a little education. I used used to laugh at it when I’d see some really innovative exhibitry and I’d say, oh, you guys snuck a little education in on those guys. That’s pretty good. You’ve got an animal that draws you to the exhibit and then they have neat graphics or copy that talks further about these animals or the world in which they live out in the wild. Conservation is a, a big component as well, but it depends on the facility. Obviously its focus of its mission statement and its resources. But again, even the smallest aquarium can contribute to successful conservation programming. So You mentioned, you mentioned graphics in many instances.

What’s the best way to get that message across?

’cause people don’t necessarily seem to read Yeah. Graphics.

Yeah. How did you, how do you help get that message across?

Yeah, it’s, it’s gotta, it’s gotta be attractive. It’s gotta draw your eye. The old days when it was just, you know, a sign with a picture of the animal, maybe the genus and species, maybe here’s where it’s from. It’s like, you know, unless you’re the aquarium geek, you’re not gonna read most of those. But if you can talk about showing a little video of the animal or the world, it came, it came from, or to my mind, some of the more successful things I’ve seen at the aquarium is a conservation involvement we have in showing our people there and what they’re doing. And for instance, she, aquaquarium has always had a huge presence in The Bahamas. It’s close right across the ocean from Miami, for instance. And you can work with them and help them with some of their conservation programming.

And we’re currently doing that now. Things that are importance to the Bahamian government, their conservation organization, but they may not have the financial means to accomplish that on their own. So they would welcome a, a well-designed research program and we can help facilitate that. So the, I think the opportunities are there. It’s just a matter of prioritization of a, of a given aquarium’s mission statement.

I mean, have there been advances in graphics in how to do this? Or, or Not?

Yeah, yeah. Gosh, I remember a big thing was, I can’t remember what they call it. It was a wheel that you would turn and it’d have various facets and you could learn about different animals in the exhibit by turning this, A large part is our touch screens. Just nothing more than an iPad, even though that’s probably could be ancient technology by now. I’m not sure the state of the art there. But in our Amazon exhibit, which is a big immersive exhibit with terrestrial components, plants, aquatic animals, you can call up on the screen any individual animal you recognize, and then expand the level of information by just scrolling through the screen. So I think that type of thing, although it’s difficult to maintain, we found, but it’s, it’s something that gives the individual that’s interested a lot more information going to a second and third degree or different level. Some people don’t care, some people just wanna know the name of the fish or think, wow, that’s a weird looking fish. That’s kind of cool. But there is that, that want to understand what do they eat, you know, look at that weird mouth.

How do they eat? You know, why, why do they have that adaptation type of thing. So I I, the graphics part is always a huge part of the exhibit design and, you know, it’s not my background, but sitting in on design meetings I’ve come to appreciate, you know, what you put out there and it can’t be too lengthy is, I think the discovery we’ve come away with. Because seldom will anyone sit there and read through the entire text that you might have. I think it’s good to get, you know, hit bullet points, give several pages of information, but that’s probably good enough if an individual is really interested. We have the internet, you know, people might say, I gotta look that one up when I get home, type of thing. So, but graphics are always a necessary component of all the exhibitry, even the, you know, the huge exhibits we have in the oceanarium with the dolphins and the whales and everything else. It’s, it’s neat for people to get the opportunity to learn more about these animals. And it’s done. We, we do make a big effort to get volunteers on the floor so that we can give a personal account, which I strongly believe in, but also, you know, they’re not everywhere.

So it’s nice to be able to have the, the videos, the graphics, whatever, that are gonna embellish the experience of seeing that animal. You’ve done a lot of things in your career.

What would you say is one of your proudest accomplishments?

Well, I, I, I guess I would say, you know, personally it would be the opportunities I had at Shut Aquarium, you know, and the advancements to the, the positions I served in. I often say, I can’t believe how lucky I was to get that job or to do this or that.

And a friend said one time, did you ever think that maybe you set yourself up to be lucky?

I’m like, what do you mean?

It’s like, well, and for instance, when the lab position was open, and that was again, a major responsibility. The lab was disease, diagnosis and treatment. I had done a master’s degree in fish parasitology. So I was kind of a natural, I had a good familiarity with what I might be dealing with. So I didn’t intend for that to happen. I never wor thought I’d work at a public aquarium. But as it turned out, it facilitated not only a promotion, but also a kind of an easy egress into the disease analysis and treatment aspect of things. But probably the biggest accomplishment, and it was not me alone by any means, was the opening of the oceanarium and acquiring all the animals.

That was a massive endeavor. It still staggers me when I think about it. I’m like, oh my God, I’m glad we did that. That went very well. But at the time it was just a lot going in my life personally and then as well at work and, you know, long hours, like anything that’s worthwhile probably is. But it was something that I’m still very proud of. And when I go back there and I see those animals and the exhibitry and all the thought that went into it, including the terrestrial part, trying to make the geologic features look like what you might see in southeast Alaska or somewhere along the Pacific Northwest coast. We try to replicate that and utilize that even as a interpretive component of your experience.

So I, I guess if I had to say one thing, it would be the successful operation opening an operation of the Oceanarium. You had talked about a little about volunteers.

What is the place, do you believe, for volunteers within an aquarium setting? Are they valuable?

Gosh, yes. Everywhere. I used to, when I would give tours and, and part of my work when I, you know, went beyond caring for the animals directly was to do tours for prospective donors or, you know, honored guests or whatever. And because I knew the animal collection, I was able to knowledgeably speak about the animals, but also give all the anecdotes about, you know, funny stories or what it took to bring this animal in or what we do to care for it. ’cause it’s kind of difficult. It, it was a, a neat part of it. I’m trying to think back to your original question again About the volunteers. The volunteers, the volunteers conduct almost every aspect of the aquarium operations. They do not work with the life support equipment. They do get involved with development, but that’s usually to help facilitate a party or something.

They’re not, they’re not out there fundraising necessarily. But when I would walk around with these tours, I would speak to the army of volunteers we have, and when I was last there, we had 800 volunteers. Now not all of them are there every week. Some of ’em are brought in for special events or parties or whatever. But a very good friend of mine, and he said he’s retiring from diving in the Caribbean reef tank because it’s no longer there. He’s still volunteering. He’s, as he said, he’s cutting bait, which means he’s helping prep the food diet. And this January will be 48 years he’s been volunteering.

It just amazes me that somebody is that dedicated. But the, the use of volunteers and education husbandry and the lab doing water quality testing, we do a tremendous amount of water quality testing. And we would not be able to do the level we are without the volunteer help. And I could say that for almost any operation they’re involved with, it’s because of the volunteers that we’re able to maintain a higher level of operation. The volunteers go through training and they have to know the area that they’re gonna work in. And it’s not to say that we haven’t had challenges. We have some people that get a little bit of knowledge and all of a sudden they know a lot more than they think they know and sometimes give incorrect information. So if there are some, a little bit of checks and balances, but by and large, they’re such a dedicated group of people.

And I think they’re treated with respect at the aquarium, which is a nice thing. We, we appreciate the role they have there. And it, they’re, they’re just very dedicated people.

What would you tell a young person in college to do if it appears they have a sincere and realistic interest in working in an aquarium?

Is it studying, is it working?

Is it reading, is it volunteering?

What would you tell that young person?

Gosh, any or all of the above?

You know, I always, when I, if I run into a student when I, when I was working and, you know, they would say their speak of their interest and it usually was husbandry, the ones that I was talking to, but it could be any facet of the aquarium, obviously, you know, your studies should focus in that area. Certainly reading about things, watching documentaries on television. I remember growing up in Jacque au you know, as that’s what really got me going. That and Sea Hunt, believe it or not, I’m that old. But it’s just exposing yourself to that world. And if you have an opportunity to volunteer, all the better because then you get to see pretty much the entire operations of the area that you’re going into. One of my daughters attended a college in Michigan, and I got to know some of the biology professors there, and they invited me to give a seminar. They have a Friday afternoon seminar.

I said, could you speak to the opportunities at a public aquarium?

I’m like, oh man, I’d love to. Plus I had a lot of slides, so it wasn’t a ton of work. But, you know, people always, I think, expect it’s gonna be something animal related. But, you know, there’s a lot that might require business acumen, public relations, exhibitry, you know, an art background. There’s a lot of different aspects to the successful operation of an aquarium, to which one might, you know, find interest and perhaps seek a job. I I, I always try to ask people to be open-minded, keep your options open, and certainly, you know, if you can create opportunities for yourself. But a lot of that, again, is like say something like volunteering.

Are there any suggestions you would have for those aspiring to make a difference in the aquarium world?

Boy, right off the bat, I think of one individual and it’s, it is, yeah, you know, you, you really have to be dedicated and, you know, I think the best way of doing that is becoming involved. And obviously you’re involved at the aquarium. You can reach out beyond your department, but in the bigger sense, get to know other individuals in our community. Hopefully, you know, you get to go to some of the meetings that are involved with animal husbandry or whatever you’re involved with. Get exposure to the entire community. Get to know individuals. I think the personal relationships that an individual develops are key to making a person grow further in their community. And if you were to get to that level, you know, actually working with legislators or regulators, people that might have a serious say in how you operate, the bottom line is instead of, I know some individuals find it challenging or I don’t really want to go down that road, it’s not my thing, but it’s important to the facility that those outside organizations understand what you do.

If you’re gonna work with them, it should be a two-way street and we should both get to know each other and hopefully work well together. It just, to me, it facilitates things. It greases the wheel, if you will.

Do you believe in professional growth of staff and how would you achieve it?

Oh, I strongly believe in that. It, it used to bother me if I saw an individual that wasn’t really interested in that. Again, I, I think of somebody who was long since retired, was just wonderful at Exhibitry design, set up the most beautiful aquariums, but he was just fine doing that and had no a no aspirations of going any further. A strong component that we had. I used to, at one time I chaired a employee education committee where they would be reimbursed for further studies beyond whatever degree they had. We, we strongly encourage people to like, yes, keep increasing your education as it app as it’s appropriate to the aquarium. You know, it’s gotta be, it can’t be something totally unrelated, but something that will further your knowledge base about either your department or another aspect of the aquarium. So I think it’s important to provide those opportunities.

And a lot of it comes down to sending them to a meeting. And there’s some facilities that kind of balk at that, well, he’s just an Aquarius, he doesn’t need to go to that. I’m like, I would counter with what of course he needs to go to that he, you know, he’s gonna grow in his position, you know, hopefully he’ll advance and it’s to his benefit to see what other facilities are doing and to meet other individuals. And it, it just, you know, makes you a stronger and more qualified individual. And so I, I strongly believe in it. I was very proud that the aquarium saw it that way as well.

Do we still need aquariums?

I think so. I mean, I, I, again, at the very lowest denominator, I would say they’re entertaining. Entertaining. They’re a, a fun outing for a family. But more importantly, I think I go back to Senator Carol Mosley bronze talking about, you know, cutting outta school, but going to museums. And it’s a wonderful learning opportunity. There’s so many different facilities in Chicago, for instance, for from which one can learn, but it’s also an opportunity, you know, school groups come down, our education department gives them a pre-visit package of things to prepare. Maybe while they’re on site, they have to fill out a form and answer questions that involve looking into the collection. And then generally a post visit follow up as well. So you’re really trying to give them something to, to chew on something that they can learn about this and hopefully generate further interest.

So I, you know, like most museums, I think an aquarium is a tremendous asset to a community, especially if it’s a give and take with that community, both the aquaquarium and the community benefit.

And you mentioned that communities support and can an aquarium survive without it?

Boy, you’d be hard pressed again. There’s, you know, there’s obviously the need to generate money for operations. And even though, you know, the gate is not a hundred percent, those coming through the door help you maintain your level of operations. But I think, you know, one of the things I love is like when I’m traveling somewhere and, you know, people find out, I used to work at the Shedd Aquarium, they’re like, oh man, we love the Aquaquarium. We were there when I was in for Thanksgiving three years ago. We all went to the Aquaquarium. Oh my God, that place is so cool. You develop a bigger community of support or people just, you know, showing interest.

I think aquariums are kind of a, it’s, it’s a wonderful cultural aspect of a community and, and it’s a wonderful opportunity to learn. Not everyone’s interested in that. I, I grant you that not everybody wants to go and look at tanks of Fish, but it’s, it’s something that I think, you know, going forward, aquariums are, to my mind, a necessary component of a successful community.

What do you know about the profession that you devoted so many years of your life?

Oh gosh. I, I like to feel that I’m pretty familiar with most aspects of the, of our community. Again, I always fall back to my time on the accreditation commission because several things, the, the application has covers many aspects of an aquarium’s operation. And you get to learn different departments, if you will, that weren’t core to my understanding. You become a little more familiar with what it takes to run, you know, development and generate funds, what the facilities guys have to go through to maintain a successful aquarium. Educational programs are very diverse, but all have that common theme of trying to forward the mission of that facility. So I feel good about the knowledge base, at least at a kind of a, a base level. Some areas I’m stronger than others, but I get to know what it takes to run an aquarium. And I feel like I could probably speak with individuals from any department, any aspect of operations, and have a good working knowledge, if not the ability to answer or even ask questions of them and get a fuller understanding the community is diverse and expanding the couple big things in a GA is the focus on diversity and inclusion and accessibility is a huge push right now.

As is animal wellbeing.

There’s a lot of concern with how do you, how do you know that animal is comfortable?

It’s happy, so to speak.

How do you know how, what you judge it, how do you judge if this animal is doing well?

It’s in, in its environment. It’s a huge aspect of study in a ZA right now. And I think it’s only gonna be for the betterment of our collections.

How would you like to be remembered?

Ooh, I guess, you know, as an approachable individual, one that was open-minded. I like to think that I was always receptive to new ideas and could work with an individual that brought a new idea forward and said, Hey, let’s look into that. Let’s make it work. And, you know, if I was at the higher level, I could probably facilitate that by bringing it to the, the senior management table and, you know, try and generate interest there. And then, okay, that sounds great. Look into it, see what it’s gonna take to make that go forward. So, you know, it, it’s not a legacy that, you know, I help bring the ocean area of animals in. I wasn’t the only guy doing that, but personally I would like to be remembered as someone that was approachable and just had an open mind. That simple. Well, thank you very much Jim Robinette, we appreciate your, your insights.

Thank you for the opportunity. It’s been great. I.