Doug's Monterey Bay Aquarium Interview about Rosa

chat can I get a freaking pogies for what is going to be really hype which is watching an interview woo I have no legs okay but actually it's really great and then I can comment on it as a chair which will be confusing to anybody who doesn't know what's going on um so this is hi Melanie thanks so much for this is an interview with Melanie who's the head of mammals at the Montery Bay Aquarium who works directly with the SE otters and I was able to chat with her yesterday and this is actually a wonderful conversation um and I learned a lot about the sea otter stuff and I swear dude meow thank you Joe I swear you're G to come out of this wanting to support sea otter more it's it's great hearing about him and you get to learn about what Rosa was like to work with what her personality was like so I will sit here as a chair and occasionally give commentary but this is a 20 minute conversation uh please enjoy this this is pre-recorded this is not live uh as you can probably tell because I'm over there I pointed and I realized you cannot see my hand so going to stop pointing okay talking today um could you just let me know what your name that I already said is and your role at the mon Bay Aquarium thank you well thank you for me your program today my name is Melanie order and I am the curator of mammals at the monter Bay Aquarium who is the bald man on turn it up oh well our main mammal is theot so my my title is a bit elusive it's curator of mammals um but that mammal would reference our sea adds and specifically I work with our seats that are our resident seats at the aquarium very nice uh so what is a typical day like working with the sea otters we get to see a little bit of like can you actually not hear them it's pretty loud you can hear them right I'm glad you finally get a chance to talk about Doug dug instead of the other way around any shocking tell SW dug is gone what else goes on taking care of them they they keep us busy for sure and one of the main things we do for them is provide all of their health care their nutrition enrichment training uh we even get in and dive to make sure their habitat's nice and clean and clean their Windows um a couple times a week we dive in their seat habitat we actually move the seats into a behind the-scenes pool so we can dive in there safely and they're not trying to turn the air off on our scuba tanks or pull the masks off of our faces and so every because every day is a little bit different um as I said we dive twice a week on other days we might be doing more training on some days we might be doing more enrichment with them like giving them toys and things and we do have three scheduled feeds a day at 10:30 1:30 and 3:30 and so our audiences can jump online and see those feeds every day that we do with our sea ERS so this would be very confusing if you just like tuned into the stream and I haven't said anything for a while and then suddenly the chair just starts moving like presumably somebody who Tunes in is going to think I'm in the bathroom and then it will just he'll just randomly start moving and talking um if anybody comes in they're like wears Doug she' just be like at at them and be like oh he's in the bathroom and then all of a sudden I'll be like hey DG guy is pretty funny over there like who's the chair why is there a chair here that's a lot of fun that we we share a little bit about our otters every day to our online audience and diet preparation is a huge part of what we do to take care of them we get there about 7 7:30 in the morning prepare all of the food they need for the day and they eat about 25% of their body weight every day and they weigh about 40 to 50 lb so we're preparing thank you compact disc pounds of food every day for each of our otters yeah I saw the kitchen when I was there and it is it is a lot of food is so much food yes they eat they eat a lot and they eat a lot of a good food that is human grade quality and also also suain so it comes from good sources that are not um being detrimental to Wild population thank you boom sling yeah um I don't know if you guys saw I attempted to eat a full day food of like sea otter's meal in a day with three friends and we couldn't do it even with four of us so that's impressive yeah yeah I it made me much more impressed by what the sea otters can uh put back every single day um it seems like the sea ERS have a lot of personality at least from what I saw do you have any like um I don't know you just like talk about how the sea ERS are maybe individually different maybe it's just like one anecdote or Quirk of some of the different ones uh and then Rosa anything notable thank you Anonymous for sure they definitely all have different personalities and right now we have Ivy Sela and Ruby are our resident theaters Ivy is 12 years old soon to be 13 she is our whitest or blondest daughter and that coloration just comes because of age um individual genetics maybe time in the Sun and just fashion too right well we we do call her are are platinum blonde and she yeah yes she lives up to that name she she can be a little particular and wants things just just right if anything's different in her environment Ivy will notice it for instance we put a couple new plants around our exhibit one day and she came on deck and she was checking them out and like what are those things it took her a couple of days to approve of the new plantings but I think we've got Ivy's approval so she's a real real sweet out her she's definitely aware of her surroundings and will will let us know that um she does like what's going on she's not GNA come over and interact with us so the little particular I would say thank you Emma she's a great otter and fun to work with she sounds like a cat sounds like a cat like my my old cat I've worked with a lot of animals during my career and not to directly compare them but sea OTS are maybe the most catlike exotic animal I have worked with they they want things in a particular way um they're interested they'll interact if they're not maybe you should just come on back later and see that they want to they want to interact with you oh that's adorable that's gonna get I think the cat fans uh in the audience will very much appreciate the knowledge that they are sort of similar to cats Maybe otter are very independent and and spicy I would say uh what about Sela what is what are some I don't know personality smart um Sela Sela is uh sela's also 12 years old her and I've here about the same age and sela's really smart she catches on to things really quickly and she has actually partaken in research studies where she was trained to touch different objects with her paws and then tell the staff working with them which Which object was bigger and that helped us learn more about sea otters so that we could learn more about the size of prey or the animals they were collecting to eat in the wild that were beneficial for them so they otter are pretty smart right they might feel something in the dark water and be like well this muscle feels bigger than this one so let me take the bigger one cuz that's going to be more beneficial to me so Sela is a little bit more mild manner generally speaking I would say than Ivy and and really smart um and definitely likes to engage in the training sessions that you can see us do every day with our otter if you come online yeah and uh sela's easier easy to tell apart from Ivy she's got a more dark chocy uh fur color yeah all right and then what about Rosa what what was a notable personality trait or two about her oh well Rosa was just and I IC animal she came to us at a really young age as um a lot of our seats have she was just a couple weeks old when she came to the aquarium back in 1999 and then um she was determined to be non-releasable and settled into the aquarium since uh she was rescued and she's just been a pillar for our SE otter program she was one of the first ERS that became a surrogate mom and that's when our SE seots that live on our exhibit act as foster moms for pups that come in from the wild into our rehabilitation program and so she was a great mom she was kind of a furious mom she was very protective of the pups that she cared for and she was also very playful she's not she was not a shy animal she would be out there by our Windows where our guests could see her very very very social yeah you got to meet her right when you were able to come out and visit us yeah and so just just a really confident animal and I would say she was really good at being a seaotter she took really good care of her pup she loved crabs and she loved food in the shell and she loved to crack them open and she loved to play with her toys and most of the time willing to work with her silly human friends but if she didn't want to she would let you know that you also should come back later and maybe have something something better than what you have right now because she definitely had preferences in food um and that that changed depending the day so some days frm was good some days clam was good and she was such a special honter that um you know the last few years we were like yeah Rosie you can have whatever you want make sure we have it in the refrigerator for you yeah it was always a lot of fun um knowing that we were supporting her very particular elegant culinary preferences that what like I thought it was kind of a joke when I kept saying we were going to get a really nice shrimp and then we realized she's actually getting like great stuff so it was awesome you know she would eat bigger shrimp than I have eaten in my life and she she loved them on if it was a day that she liked shrimp then she would right right if she's in the mood yeah she was in the mood I like how you described her her elegant preferences is that how you described her yeah something like that I I have to imagine her brain she had very she's like I'm it's a it's a clam kind of day you know she just she knew what she wanted waking up she yes no one day one of our staff was working with her and sometime it was even how we gave it to her do you do you want it in a shell do you want it in a toy would you like it if I fed it to you over here and one day she was eating out of a toy and we had a couple toys and we would give them to her and we used really sturdy dog toys essentially and we'll put food in there and she likes to like to scoop that scoop it out well we ran out of the toys they all sank to the bottom around of her pool around her and so we started offering her the same food that was in the toy but she would drop it and all of a sudden she left her her staff member went and got a to toy handed the staff member the toy like I I wanted in the toy today yeah that's an absolutely true story that happened to one of my co-workers Rosa communicated loudly if you listen to her oh that's incredibly adorable um so okay the the SE rehabilitation program I think is incredible and uh you know at this point I will have probably uh yell Lou yelled loudly about the program but could you just walk through like y let's say the stages of you know uh finding an otter and maybe if she was if the otter is rehabilitated by one of the SE otter in the aquarium and then them being released like kind of what that that those stages are happy to support great I would love to talk about that so when our otter that live at the aquarium come into play it's really when a pup or an animal less than nine weeks of age comes in a sea outter less than 9 weeks of age comes into our rehabilitation program and that's when for one reason or another that of that young animal young sea has been separated from their mother seat pups are dependent on mom for upwards to six months so any otter that is two three four weeks old they're not going to survive on their own in the wild and so our hope is that when we get a call that there is a the seaotter pup our Rehabilitation staff will go out assess the situation and the very first thing they do is see if there is a female out there in the ocean looking for that U moms are if they're around they're going to be popping up looking for their pup even vocalizing or calling for it and we'll spend quite a bit of time doing that to do what we call a reunite where the pup is put back in the wild with their mom and if that can't happen then that pup is brought into the monter montere bay Aquarium and our Rehabilitation and Veterinary teams work together to assess the health of that animal so the first thing we do is work to stabilize the pup and at that point humans are taking care of the animal we provided a formula from a bottle you'll be eating solid food we'll offer it solid food and then our veterinarians really assess the state of the health of that animal and work to stabilize it healthwise and so the next couple of weeks are going to be Hands-On human care and working to stabilize that pup getting it to drink that formula eating the food we're offering it and and working towards that next stage when that pup's old enough that it's eating all solid food isn't drinking from a bottle anymore or taking or needing that formula it's time to try to introduce it to one of our resident female sea otters and that's when the surrogate part of the seat's job at the Monterey Bay Aquarium comes into play and we'll have one of our female seats that live at the aquarium uh go up to our facility where our our pups are being cared for it's it's behind the scenes it's right on site at the aquarium it's just behind the scenes and our hope is that when that female seater is introduced to that pup that maternal Instinct will kick in and they essentially adopt it as their own and for the next upwards to 3 to 4 months that female is going to live with that pup and essentially teach it how to be a sea outter the pup will learn from that surogat foster mom how to dive and look for food how to eat food how to you eat a spiky urchin like that takes some skill mom the mom will teach them how to do that and and there's several Milestones our Rehabilitation team looks for um eating Whole Food um a nice healthy coat when the pups are born they have a pup coat it's really fluffy it's really buoyant that gets shed and hopefully their adult for comes in so it's it's waterproof and and does what it needs to in the wild and keeps that out her warm um and their skin dry underneath and teaching that pup things like how to how to socialize with other otter they live in huge groups called rafts in the wild and so we want them to be around other otter through that process and so Mom and foster mom and pup will be together until the pup is about 6 months old and we target that date that's when that's when moms separate from pups in the wild and so we try to recreate that same timeline of processes that they would that we would see with an otter mom and pup in the wild that is amazing that is also a lot more detail than even I realized that's yeah there's so many like stages to that that I wasn't aware of um yeah it's we've been uh rescuing and rehabilitating seaotter since before the aquarium opened in 1984 for to go to the bathroom uh be right back please continue to enjoy this lovely interview we're actually celebrating our 40th anniversary this fall and we're pretty excited about that and even before our exhibits were opened we were bringing in an sea otters that were sick or injured or needed help and at first we didn't know a lot about how to do that and it was our sea otters our permanent resident otter that are non-releasable that really showed us they have this inclination to take care of other sea outs especially young seats I don't know why it's a lot of work to be a mom right it's it's not super easy job no matter what species you are and they have this propensity to adopt these pups that are really really needy I've taken care of seat pups and it's around the clock hair it is 24hour a day hair yeah and we asked and I have co-workers that help me with that these these moms don't have any help they we're like can you please take care of this pop and often times they're like yeah sure I can I can do that and they we have learned that the sea otters just are much better at teaching other sea ERS how to be sea ERS than people than human beings yeah um man that yeah that also just gives even more or I don't know it makes it even cooler that you know an otter like Rosa was willing to take on this motherly role like over and over and over and just help out these pups over and over who are you know now out in the wild and thriving it's it's amazing to me I I'm in awe of what our seaters do and how they've helped with our wild conservation and recovery of the Southern seat population and they do Rosa raised 15 surrogate pups she fostered 15 pups um she lived to be 24 years old she was the oldest Southern seater that we know of and she she broke a lot of records and um it was a privilege to have worked with her and share her with audiences all over like yours your audience that has tuned in and been so supportive of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Sea outter program so thank you shout out to all your folks and everybody tuning in we send you a big thank you from the monter aquarium yeah this was great hearing hearing about this was fantastic I guess just final thing is there anything else like with the future of the SE program or monter Bay in general uh that you'd want to kind of shout out or mention just kind of open-ended like hey what other things are Beyond just the kind of specific rehabilitation program we talked about uh might people be supporting when they are hopefully right now donating to the mon Bay Aquarium uh yeah we we always have things going up yeah I know that's a big question because there's like hundreds of things but if you want to like highlight a few or something that you think might be worthwh um as I mentioned we're super excited it's our 40th aniversary coming up this fall when the aquarium opened its doors back in 1984 we're super proud of the conservation efforts that we have made for wild conservation and preservation of the ocean in in lots of different projects not just our seat program um but other projects that the aquarium has been involved in we are constantly doing research to make sure that the efforts we are taking are really doing what we hope that they're doing for instance when our sea ERS are released after Rehabilitation those otters are tracked for two weeks a minimum of two weeks to make sure they're surviving in the wild if they're not doing well we'll bring them back and try to give them a second chance so really Dynamic process and then studies that continue on and look at those individuals even into later years Rose's pups that she reared are were reintroduced to the Wild and that they had pups of their own and just contributed to that the success of the wild success of sea Southern sea otter in the wild and Rosa is a grandmother was grandmother right we can say she she is not technically biologically but but basically Foster her her foster kids have we know have gone on to raise pups of their own and so being that she has been a had been a surrogate since 2002 and had we estimate that three of three out of four of the pups we release are successful meaning they are put back out there in the wild and they they not only survive but Thrive they can forge on their own they socialize with other OTS and then they reproduce as well and so at this point Rosa could be a great great great grandmother so um we were just constantly learning more about them so always something exciting going on at the aquarium and whether your viewers donate through this weekend's fundraising campaign or guests can come through the door or do a different sort of online donation you are helping wild conservation directly your funds are going to not only helping support the physical facility and the Animals there but projects that help support wild conservation so any any donation that anyone can make is is helping to go to a a really great pause in the efforts that the aquarium tries to make in ocean conservation and preservation fantastic awesome thank you so much melie I really appreciate it for all the work you do and for uh hopping on this interview um even I I learned a lot and I've been there and behind the scenes this is really interesting so thanks so much well come on back anytime we would love to have you shout out to all your viewers come on come on out and visit us if you can and if you cannot just to tune in online you can see a lot of our animals through our webcams every day and get a glimp glimps into the aquarium even if you're not able to physically come and visit us we love our online viewers yeah it is it is a wonderful place to visit I highly recommend all right cool thank you so much Melanie I appreciate it thank you thank you bye bye bye bye and I'm back isn't that great wasn't that such a great like you like learn a lot and Rose is apparently the most adorable otter ever and they're like cats kind of I legitimately came like I cuz I did that yesterday we recorded that and I was like oh montere is the greatest place of all time