WaterNotes

Robo-Shamu Can Jump Too!

I really hope that this is a publicity stunt of farcical proportions.  Apparently PETA, backed by an anonymous donor based in Norfolk, VA, has written to InBev, the new owner of Anheuser Busch’s parks SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, with an offer to buy out the parks. 

Why would PETA want to own zoological parks that “imprison” animals?  They want to set the animals free.  (Oh and replace them with animatronics!)

I have often encountered visitors in zoological parks who voice an opinion that holding animals in any enclosure is somehow unethical.  And I have yet to be converted by any of their reasons.  I also fail to comprehend the logic behind the position that zoological insitutions are simply out to make money or to entertain humans while allowing their animals to suffer. 

All the people I have ever had the pleasure to call my coworkers at zoos and aquariums have been exceedingly intelligent and passionate people who have wanted to work with animals and further the cause of conservation since they were children.  And it is never easy work.  Zoo careers require dedication and perseverance that would boggle the mind of those who enjoy a typical work week and a typical daily routine.  Would you have the fortitude to report to work at 2am every day and leave late at night?  Would you be happy to staff the institution during hurricanes?  Would you cheerfully haul 60lb buckets of fish for relatively little pay knowing that your classmates from Calculus C are now engineers pulling in $70,000 a year? 

I’m not attempting to denigrate other careers or to elevate the average zoological staffer.  Our jobs are incredibly rewarding and we do them because we love the work, not because we aspire to lasting fame or to financial heights. My point is entirely this: we wouldn’t work for an institution that allowed animals to suffer and we wouldn’t work for zoos if we didn’t believe in their ability to alter viewpoints, educate, and enlighten at the same time that they entertain. 

PETA’s targeting of SeaWorld over any other zoological institution is absolutely inane.  AB parks donate millions of dollars each year to other zoological institutions, conservation groups, grassroot outreach projects, and environmental education efforts across the globe in an effort to sustain research and education concerning wildlife.  And that says nothing of the rescue and rehabilitation efforts carried on within the park.

More than anything, the idea that animals born and raised in captivity will survive outside of captivity is disastrous.  While there are certainly animals within any zoo’s care that may survive outside of a zoological facility there are a tremendous number of factors working against them.  Questions of diseases carried by wild conspecifics and captive animal exposure, hunting skills, socialization problems, and whether or not suitable habitat exists all bear upon the survival of a mass release such as PETA proposes.  American zoos belonging to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums maintain several species that are effectively extinct in the wild and which, without zoos and aquariums, would no longer exist. 

PETA would do better to take the millions - maybe billions - required to buy out and shut down SeaWorld and other Busch parks and apply them to conservation and research for wildlife that might allow us to save habitat and repair human-impacted ecosystems around the world.  PETA probably won’t earn fame and glory for such a donation, but it would go so much farther towards the heart of their mission to save wildlife and animals that they feel are being subjugated for human greed. 

Calm Before the Storm?

Tropical storm Fay rolled through central Florida towards late afternoon today.  Schools were called off - this is their first week back - but I reported to work.  I wish I wore wetsuits; I could have used them while splashing through puddles.

The concept of a “calm before the storm” is probably centuries old.  I pondered the phrase as I toured the park this morning waiting for the first bands and squall lines of Fay to swirl out across the state.  The stillness is always eerie and heavy with a sort of expectation.

The strange thing is this: we haven’t always had the technology to know that a hurricane is on the way.  I tried to imagine what it must have been like for early settlers in Florida and even the native cultures here like the Seminole to weather these large and powerful storms.  Did they know something was different?  What about a morning like today’s would have given away the signals that something stronger was on the horizon?

Animals always seem to know when major events are imminent.  Perhaps native Americans and early settlers - with their lack of TiVo and the internet and Starbucks - were keen enough observers of the natural world to notice the lack of animals that is so characteristic of the “calm”.  The anoles that typically run around my feet when I leave the apartment were absent this morning.  The tree frogs didnt call out to wake me as the sun rose.  The hawks and osprey so common on the lightpoles and wires along my route to work were suspiciously out of sight. 

Can you imagine what it must have been like to shelter from hurricane winds inside a modest cabin or a more rustic shelter used by tribes?  All I can think of is the screech and whistle of the wind and the thrashing of sabal palm and saw palmetto fronds against the sides of the shelter as you stared wide-eyed into the darkness inside.  The raindrops would probably spatter and spray into the gaps in the boards and the hides and soak the ground at your feet.  The lightning crashes would be rapid, intense, firing repeatedly in a pattern you’ve never witnessed from an ordinary afternoon shower. 

And then the doldrums of the hurricane’s eye might tempt you outside to have a look around at the upended scene of random projectiles tossed about by the wind and scattered across your homebase.  That would be a decided positive about weathering a hurricane in a less technologically advanced time.  The projectiles would probably be a little less deadly.  No metal trash can lids flung against trees or telephone wires sparking against the ground.  Perhaps even an amount of the flooding we sometimes see would not exist; without so much pavement the water would perhaps have more of a place to retreat too. 

It would be an intense experience to say the least.  I’d still like to know, and perhaps some anthropologist can tell me - if these people knew that intense storms were due for an arrival and how they dealt with the altered world inside a hurricane. 

Anxiety Around A Seafood Restaurant Table

Alongside the path of adopting a more green lifestyle I’ve made some rather enormous changes in how and what I eat.  I’ve never been much of a carnivore.  Most people aren’t surprised to find that I eschew pork entirely and its rare-beyond-rare to see me chow down on red meat of any kind.  I like chicken but its not a consistent element in my diet.  Neither is seafood. 

I love seafood.  Scallops, clams, shrimp, fillets, steaks, ahi, sushi, sashimi, seaweed salad and all the rest are a welcome site on my dinner plate.  I enjoyed a delightful dinner with my family and sister tonight at a favorite seafood restaurant in Port Canaveral but we developed a sense of anxiety around the table… or at least I did.  Why?  They were offering up everything from shrimp to thresher shark to ahi to wahoo on the menu.  And seafood comes at a high price these days.  Improper management of stocks has led to virtual and actual collapses in several commercially important species. 

In many cases the target species is not the only one impacted.  I took part in research interested in identifying a chemoattractant found in female horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) that made them excellent bait for the American eel, Anguilla rostrata.  Who eats American eel, you ask?  Well, not many Americans but eel is a favored item in Japanese cuisine.  American eels were often shipped out to supply the international market.  Demand for our eels created a demand for bait to catch them with which added to the human stressors upon horseshoe crab populations.  The research - which is still ongoing - had the ultimate goal of synthetically approximating the attractant and using it in a bait matrix made from something other than the real crabs!

Sometimes the trickle down effect is more immediate and dramatic.  Bycatch is a common word in the language of marine conservation and for wretched reasons.  Millions of nontarget fish, sharks, sea turtles, and other critters are killed inadvertently by gear set out for valuable fish humans are interested in consuming. 

Advances in commercial fishing technology - most notably through the SmartGear competition - and in regulation have started us in the right direction but the problem of bycatch may truly find resolution only through the limits of the free market.  There is a familiar phrase: When the buying stops, the killing can too.  If we choose to only consume fish that is sustainably caught or raised we can shape the market and pressure the commercial fisheries to conform to practices that ensure healthy, thriving oceans. 

How do you know if something was sustainably caught?  Check out any of the ocean-friendly seafood guides available online (Blue Ocean Institute, MBARI: Seafood Watch).  In most cases you can print out a pocket-sized guide or even make use of an immediate mobile service - the Fish Phone - to clue you into greenlit seafood and end, forever, anxiety around a seafood restaurant table. 

The Irony of the House Lizard

I’ve interacted with an interesting slew of animals as a naturalist and aquarist.  Giant Pacific octopus?  Check.  Seahorses, seadragons, urchins, horseshoe crabs, cat sharks?  Check.  Stingrays, dolphins, snakes, scorpions, kookaburras, red-tailed hawks?  Check.  Macaws, African gray parrots, eels, venomous fish, and an assortment of turtles?  Check.  A sea turtle?  Check.  Penguins of several species?  Check. 

Have you noticed yet what’s missing from this list?  Spiders!  Ever since I was a little girl I have been paranoid around spiders with no reasonable explanation.  Its a definite phobia.  I’ve shunned classroom tarantulas all my life and will probably continue to do so.  Interestingly, I’m a-okay with handling spider crabs. 

But what’s that got to do with house lizards?  Like most kids who grew up in the sunshine state, I hunted house lizards (also known as anoles) and got a certain sort of somewhat sadistic satisfaction from pulling their tails off. 

Yes, their tails come off!  Its a neat adaptation - called autotomy - that lets them escape from predators and humans masquerading as predators.  And I didn’t exactly pull the tails off by force.  Anoles have breakpoints along the tail vertebrae that make it possible for the muscles within the tail to literally break itself! 

I’m a reformed lizard hunter these days… unfortunately.  The irony of the house lizards in Florida is that, on ocassion, they literally become house lizards.  At the moment I have two baby anoles running around my apartment and I am essentially powerless to capture the little things.  Every time I get close I become squeamish and have to abandon the attempt. 

Its rather ridiculous.  I can take a bite from a kookaburra in front of a room full of children without any sign of distress but I can’t pick up a teensy little anole.  I’m almost embarassed but I’ve been telling visitors that the duo is helping me keep ants at bay.  And in fact I have actually seen their lightning quick strikes on unsuspecting ants.  They’re hardly two inches long and already rather adept predators.

I should really use my huge human brain to design an anole trap.  Hmm.

Anoles in the state of Florida are actually an interesting conservation topic.  The house lizards I hunted as a kid in the mid-1980’s were phosphorescent green and gorgeous.  Anolis carolinensis is the only anole native to the US.  These days you can easily find Cuban and brown anoles hunting ants outside of Florida homes.  Its not terribly clear how introductions occurred but the Cubans are slowly displacing the true green anoles, not unlike the slow displacement of native green tree frogs by Cuban tree frogs here in the south.  In fact green anoles are so uncommon around Orlando that when I do see one it becomes a memorable moment.