First Steps, First Splash, First Exam

The birth of a California sea lion pup has everyone at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach talking and watching. The male pup, born on Memorial Day, weighs about 17 pounds and is about 2-1/2 feet long with a fuzzy brown coat. His mother Kona, started nursing him, and the two bonded almost immediately. The aquarium’s husbandry (animal health care) staff will closely monitor and care for mom and pup in a behind-the-scenes nursery where the pup can mature over the next six months or longer. If this treatment sounds similar to the way humans care for their own children in the months after birth, that’s because it is. In fact, aquatic medicine, including the equipment and techniques used to treat ocean animals, is strikingly the same. Dr. Lance Adams, the veterinarian at the Aquarium of the Pacific, performs skin scrapes and gill biopsies on his patients. He can take X-rays tank-side, do an ultrasound and use anesthesia to put an animal to sleep before a procedure. Marine mammals are similar to humans in that they are warm-blooded and breathe air through their lungs. However, their lung capacity is different and they have a blubber layer or thermal insulation for food storage or fat. Adams explains that they are also “hydrodynamic,” with features that allow them to move easily and quickly in the water. Unlike humans, however, marine mammals don’t outwardly display injury or sickness, as this would make them appear vulnerable to predators in the wild. The husbandry staff, about 40 animal caretakers, spends a good amount of time observing the appearance, behavior and eating habits of the aquarium’s 12,500 inhabitants’fish, birds and mammals. Some of the animals in the larger exhibits are not looked at on an individual basis, such as the 1,500 to 2,000 specimens in the large Tropical Reef Habitat. “It’s not practical to look at individuals [in the larger exhibits],” says Perry Hampton, director of animal husbandry. He adds that the aquarium has scuba-certified volunteers who dive inside these exhibits to hand-feed in every corner, and those volunteers are often the “eyes and ears” in the tanks, reporting potential problems to the staff. The sea lions, however, are evaluated on an individual basis. They are given thorough exams more than once a year and checked on multiple times a day by the mammalogists. Sea lions “don’t normally show signs of being pregnant,” Adams says. Kona’s pup was “not something we were planning on or had a conception date for.” The husbandry staff, however, had its suspicions. David Place, a mammalogist (marine mammal caretaker) who works at the aquarium’s Seal and Sea Lion Habitat, says he had noticed that Kona had a large abdomen. “It’s almost like I’m a proud father,” Place says with a proud smile, explaining that he was the one who originally brought Kona to the aquarium from her home at Orlando Sea World’s Rocky Point Preserve in 2003. He rode on a Fed-Ex plane with Kona and a male sea lion, Parker, both in containers, when they were about a year old. Now 4, Kona is a young mother. Sea lions usually begin breeding between ages 5 and 7. The gestation period for females is about seven months, but there is often a “delayed implantation” period in which the fertilized egg delays its implantation for several months. Most sea lion pups are born in June or July. “I was a little unsure of how [Kona] would be as a mother, but her instincts kicked in,” says Place, who is rotating shifts with other mammal experts while they’re on 24-hour watch of the pup. Adams explains that when the staff found Kona with her pup on Memorial Day morning, they purposely left them alone to give them a chance to bond and so as not to upset Kona. But when Kona got nervous and tried to move her pup into the water, the staff had to intervene and move them both into a holding area adjacent to the Seal and Sea Lion Habitat in order to have more control over the environment. Sea lion pups aren’t old enough to swim until they’re 6 months to a year old. The mammalogists are “gaining knowledge” of the pup, constantly taking notes and gathering data. They know it’s a male because it has a genital slit that is farther up, away from the anus, than female genitalia. The pup is “walking on all four flippers, a little awkwardly, mimicking its mother,” Place says. The staff placed a baby pool in its holding area so that it could splash around in the water. On Monday, they transferred Kona and the pup to the behind-the-scenes nursery, where they will remain until the pup is weaned. At that point, Kona will rejoin the other sea lions, and the staff will continue to train the pup so that he will be prepared to interact with the others in the exhibit. The staff does not know whether the pup’s father is Parker, the younger, 220-lb. male, or Miller, who is 25 and weighs more than 700 lbs. “Miller is like the alpha male,” Place says, explaining the animal’s loud barking when it bursts out of the water and flops up onto the rock surface. “He vocalizes at this time [mid-afternoon] for the others to take a nap. “With California sea lions, a large bull (male) will claim territory and females within that territory for himself,” Place says. “He will defend that territory for as long as he can, mating with as many females as possible. Most altercations between animals come down to vocalization and puffed-up chests, but very few ever lead to actual battle wounds. Smaller animals will not challenge larger animals, as they know they are far interior in strength.” Though Miller is head of his species at the aquarium, he was originally a wild sea lion that ended up at the aquarium many years ago after being treated at a rehabilitation center and deemed not releasable to the wild. The California sea lion has been a protected species since the passing of the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, which makes it illegal to hunt or harass marine mammals in U.S. waters. While the aquarium does not take any animals from the wild, it does accept them through its “stranding program,” if the animals can no longer hunt or survive in their natural environment. Others, like the new pup, are born in captivity. The aquarium’s Seal and Sea Lion Habitat, which now has five sea lions and two seals, is “a nice, protective environment,” Place says, adding that there is not a lot of injury or illness. Place trains the animals for physical exercise, mental stimulation and health care. He also weighs them and checks them for bite wounds, the most common form of injury, which they get from interacting with other sea lions or seals. When treated, the animals are often given medications similar to those that dogs and human take, such as antibiotics or Cosequin, which people take for joint problems having to do with arthritis. The mammalogists report any problems to Dr. Adams, who can perform a variety of procedures in the aquarium’s small treatment room, which is equipped with an EKG machine, ultrasound machine and monitoring equipment, a portable radiograph machine and a diagnostic lab. “We try and network [with other doctors and clinics] when necessary,” Adams says, explaining that they do not have a CT scanner or a laser machine. When one of the sea lions had a nasal blockage, they had a specialist come in to perform a laser treatment to open the blockage. In general, indicators of healthy animals include clear skin and eyes, smooth, not ragged, fins, normal eating patterns and healthy size’not too fat or too thin. If an animal has a problem that needs to be treated medically, it is removed from the exhibit and cared for behind the scenes. Adams recently operated on an eel that had a mass on its head, which he speculated “was secondary to a bite wound that had healed abnormally.” Adams used new veterinary technology to control or coagulate the blood and remove the large mass, a procedure that took three and a half hours. The eel then had to be isolated for about two months in order to give it follow-up medications, which were distributed in the water. Adams says it can be difficult to work with some of the larger fish, such as the sharks, groupers and the 200-lb. giant sea bass, because the staff has to catch the fish, corral it into a separate holding and anesthetize it. Then, they put it on a stretcher made of vinyl and PVC, and attach the fish to a machine to breathe water while they work on it. Because water quality is an important part of the animals’ health, the water in each exhibit and holding area is analyzed daily and measured for salinity, temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, ammonia and nitrite, among other parameters. “They know me as a stranger who comes in and bugs them once in a while,” Adams jokes, modestly. “We have great confidence in Dr. Adams,” Hampton says. “There are very few vets out there who have the experience he has with aquatics.” Place explains that “there’s always an inherent danger” in working with the animals. Even Miller, who has been out of the wild since 1981, is still considered wild. “When we step into the exhibit we are immersing ourselves into their world. On rare occasion we are challenged for our place in the pecking order by one of the animals’Standing up to this kind of intimidation helps in keeping our place at the top but, most importantly for us, it’s the bond that we create with all of our animals that keeps everything running smoothly. We have a healthy respect for our animals and they have developed a respect for us.” For more information, call (562) 590-3100 or visit www.aquariumofpacific.org.