Latest news with #SeaLife
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Aquariums banned from allowing children to pet crabs and squid
Aquariums are to be banned from allowing children to pet crabs and squid. An overhaul of zoo and aquarium standards was announced on Saturday, with the aim of improving animal welfare. One major change is the prohibiting of vertebrates, cephalopods such as squid and octopus, and crabs from being kept in touch pools where they can be handled by visitors. Touch pools are built to mimic the natural rock pools found at the seaside and are home to a range of animal life. In nature these habitats are often filled with starfish, whelks, limpets and crabs and in aquariums. Those such as the one at the Sea Life London Aquarium are used to teach visitors, often children, about marine life. But rock pools in aquariums and zoos will no longer be able to host crabs or squid as a result of the new Government rules. The changes come after recent research has found that handling can be distressing to the animals, which are more intelligent than previously thought. The move has been applauded by animal-rights activists and there will be a two-year adjustment period before the changes need to be made. 'Animals are not curiosities' Elisa Allen, Peta's vice-president of programmes, told The Telegraph: 'Animals are not curiosities to be prodded, and prohibiting touch pools for decapod crustaceans and cephalopods – now recognised in UK law as sentient beings capable of feeling pain, stress, and distress – is both necessary and long overdue. 'These settings offer no escape from the relentless onslaught of human hands and fall far short of meeting the animals' complex physical and behavioural needs. 'Cephalopods, in particular, require ample space to explore, environmental enrichment, and the ability to hide – none of which are provided in the cramped, barren confines of a typical touch tank. It's past time we move away from treating other animals as mere playthings.' A Sea Life spokesperson said: 'The welfare of all creatures in our care is the number one priority at Sea Life. 'We welcome the updates to the standards for modern zoo practice, which will ensure that the UK continues to lead the way in the safety and welfare of animals in zoo-licensed premises. 'This is at the forefront of what we do at Sea Life. Whilst we await the full details, we have already begun preparing for the changes and will review further following publication.' The new welfare rules will also force zoos to make sure elephants have large outdoor space in which to roam, with the requirement for a herd of five or fewer elephants increasing sixfold from 3,000 square metres to 20,000 square metres. Guns to ensure public safety All zoos that contain the most dangerous animals, such as big cats, gorillas or elephants, will also have to have guns available to ensure public safety. Dr Jo Judge, CEO of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) which represents over 130 zoos and aquariums said: 'The new standards are a significant step up in legal requirements and cement Britain's position as a global leader for zoos and aquariums.' Baroness Hayman, the animal welfare minister, said: 'We are a nation of animal lovers, and our best zoos and aquariums are truly world leaders in setting the standard for how wild animals should be kept. 'Today's long-overdue reforms lay the foundation for an even stronger, even more compassionate future for all zoos and aquariums – and the animals they protect. This is the first step as part of our commitment to deliver the most ambitious animal welfare reforms in a generation. 'We're making sure all sectors have the tools they need thrive, which is vital in our mission to deliver economic growth and make lives better for people across the country under our Plan for Change'
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Animals get into swim of things at new Sea Life Florida aquarium
The first animals have joined the tanks at the upcoming Sea Life Florida Aquarium in Winter Haven. Among the initial inhabitants are a black-tip reef shark named Pretzel, who was born and raised in a Sea Life attraction in Oberhausen, Germany. 'It's a whole team effort, from transport logistics to habitat checks. A lot goes on behind the scenes to make sure animal arrival is smooth and safe,' Marie Collins, regional head of conservation welfare and education, said in a video released by the attraction. Epic Universe: Exec mixes arts, engineering in theme park roles The aquarium will operate adjacent to Legoland Florida theme park in Polk County. Both are owned by Britain-based Merlin Entertainments Group, which also runs Sea Life Orlando Aquarium, Madame Tussauds and Orlando Eye in Icon Park. The Winter Haven aquarium will feature more than 3,000 marine animals, including stingrays and big-belly seahorses. It will feature 25 interactive exhibits plus a 180-degree ocean tunnel that travels beneath sea life. The new attraction won't have a Lego theme but will include a 'Theme Park Under the Sea' display 'We'll continue to welcomes species in the weeks ahead as we build towards opening day,' Collins said. The grand opening is now scheduled for June 6; its website says a 'soft opening' will launch May 23. No rest for Mess Fest: Foam flies again at Orlando Science Center For more information, go to Email me at dbevil@ BlueSky: @themeparksdb. Threads account: @dbevil. X account: @themeparks. Subscribe to the Theme Park Rangers newsletter at
CBS News
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
More than 1,000 animals find new homes after SeaQuest Roseville closes, files for bankruptcy
Hundreds of animals are finding new homes around the Twin Cities metro after SeaQuest Roseville closed its doors and filed for bankruptcy. Cisco and Chubbs are two newly acquired wallabys at the Minnesota Zoo. "They were probably hand-raised by people, so they don't fully understand that they're wallabys," Dr. Anne Rivas, director of animal health at the Minnesota Zoo, said. They are just two of the more than 100 animals taken in by the zoo after SeaQuest's bankruptcy. The newly acquired animal arsenal also includes reptiles and sugar gliders. "We've got a sloth and an armadillo that folks can see if they go out on our Tropics Trail," Rivas said. All the animals are in stable health, Rivas said. Cisco and Chubbs are still working their way out of quarantine. They came in with a few wounds but are gaining weight and healing well. Over at Sea Life inside Mall of America, tiny spotted garden eels are just a tiny sampling of the roughly 600 animals Sea Life took in, including a shark, rays and other sea creatures. Those at Sea Life said animal care teams and marine biologists will be giving top notch care. The vast majority of the animals are in quarantine. "Of the hundreds of animals we got, they arrived in varying conditions. Some were in great condition, good health, others needed a little bit more medical attention," Drew Turner, senior aquarist at Sea Life, said For most animals, Sea Life and the Minesota Zoo are now their official brand new homes. "To be able to provide placement for all of these unique diverse animals in a fairly short amount of time and get them there safely and tip top shape, has been really a phenominal effort to get to be a part of," Rivas said.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New Sea Life aquarium builds underwater theme-park scene
WINTER HAVEN – A new underwater habitat is taking form at Legoland Florida Resort. Work continues on Sea Life Florida Aquarium, the latest piece of the attraction's expansion plan. For now, there's no sea life – or enough water – to see inside Sea Life. Curved rebar shows how faux rock work will frame views into giant tanks that will house more than 3,000 animals representing 150 species. Sea Life Florida is wedged between two theme parks – Legoland and Peppa Pig parks – but it will have its own submerged park as decor in its large ocean tank. The concept was what do fish want to do when they come to Florida, said Blake Boyter, senior project manager with Merlin Magic Making, the creative arm of Legoland's parent company. 'Of course, being the theme park capital of the world, they want to come to a theme park,' Boyter said during a recent hard-hat tour of the aquarium building. 'We've got the castle with all the different roller coaster features around it,' he said. 'We've got a Ferris wheel in the back corner that's got clams.' There's also an underwater carousel, a food and beverage outlet and a reef drop in the vicinity. On the opposite side of the walkway is a haunted house section. 'Hopefully, some of our spookier fish are going to stay over in that area,' Boyter said. These props are scaled to a size that fish can get around, he said. The top of the tank is open and there is 3 feet of unthemed space up there 'so that the blacktip reef sharks can swim and circle around naturally,' he said. Legoland theme parks and Sea Life aquariums worldwide are operated by England-based Merlin Entertainments Group. There's a Sea Life in Orlando's Icon Park, where the company also runs Madame Tussauds Orlando and the Orlando Eye observation wheel. Like in the Orlando aquarium, the path through the Polk County attraction meanders through several environments, building up to a walk-through tunnel with 180-degree views of Sea Life inhabitants and the grand finale theme park under the sea scene. There are 10 zones in the aquarium attraction containing 25 exhibits including a hands-on invertebrate touch pool. Visitors will see a freshwater swamp area, Stingray Bay, Key West Harbor as well as tanks for big-belly seahorses. But for now is look is unfinished, with sealed-off windows, wiring work to go, incomplete paint job and unstocked gift shop. The water is murky as the chemistry and salt settle. Opening day is scheduled for May 23, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. 'This is the brand new, the most technologically advanced Sea Life in all of Merlin's portfolio,' said Franceen Gonzales, president of Legoland Florida Resort. It will be the 11th Sea Life attraction in the U.S. 'I was a little concerned we were going to be construction land in 2025, but it's exciting to be able to know that Merlin has invested like this in Legoland Florida,' she said. The tour included systems for climate control, filtration, lighting, life support and backup generators. Sea Life Florida will be a separately ticketed gate from Legoland Florida theme park, but combo tickets with those two plus Peppa Pig Theme Park and Legoland's water park will be available. The current entrance to Legoland park eventually will be repositioned. Email me at dbevil@ BlueSky: @themeparksdb. Threads account: @dbevil. X account: @themeparks. Subscribe to the Theme Park Rangers newsletter at
Boston Globe
05-02-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Karen Pryor, guru of positive reinforcement, is dead at 92
Her daughter, Gale, said the cause was dementia. Karen Pryor was a naturalist by nature, but she had not planned on a career as a dolphin trainer. She was an English major whose husband, a poet and helicopter pilot turned marine biologist, built the first marine park in Hawaii. Three months before it was set to open in 1964, the dolphins chosen to be the stars had confounded their trainers by not learning the tricks planned for them. Instead, they had taught their exhausted handlers to give them treats for nothing. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner had begun experiments with people and animals in the late 1930s, using positive reinforcement — what he called operant conditioning — as a way to elicit positive behaviors. (He famously taught a rat to spend money and a pair of pigeons to play Ping-Pong.) His principles had informed the nascent field of marine mammal training. Advertisement The crew at Sea Life, the Pryors' soon-to-be-opened park, had been given a manual based on those principles. But the trainers had gotten bogged down in the scientific jargon. So Karen Pryor took over. She learned the elegance of the technique, which involves waiting for a desired behavior — jumping, say, or retrieving an object — and then rewarding it with a treat. (That would be a fish, if you're a dolphin.) She learned about conditioned reinforcers: using a signal — a whistle, a hand movement, a clicker — to herald that a reward was on its way, and then using that signal to refine or shape a behavior or series of behaviors. Some of the animals she trained began to improvise, like the otter who did marvelous things with a hoop. She had trained it simply to swim through the hoop, but its innovations included lying down on it, swimming backward through it, and catching it on its hind legs and dragging it around. (Otters like to experiment.) When this one displayed its feats before a group of visiting psychologists, they were stunned. Advertisement 'Amazing,' said one, Ms. Pryor wrote in 'Lads Before the Wind: Adventures in Porpoise Training' (1975). 'It takes me four years to get graduate students to think like that.' Ms. Pryor, in 2022 with a foal from a herd of wild horses at a ranch near Tehachapi, Calif. VIA PRYOR FAMILY/NYT The creatures at Sea Life Park — an engaging cast of individuals with unique quirks and interests — not only seemed to enjoy their work, they also became skilled teachers themselves, training the humans to communicate with them more effectively. But Ms. Pryor was no sentimentalist, as she told The New York Times in 1992: 'Everybody who's done research in the field is tired of dolphin lovers who believe these creatures are floating hobbits. A dolphin is a healthy social mammal, and it behaves like one, including doing things that we don't find particularly charming.' Sea Life Park had been designed as a marine park and a research center overseen by Kenneth Norris, a noted marine mammal expert. Ms. Pryor and her cadre of trainers and dolphins began to participate in studies Norris was conducting, including for the Navy. They tested the limits of dolphin speed. They measured how deep the dolphins could dive. Years later, as a consultant to the tuna industry along with Norris, Ms. Pryor offered recommendations for designing nets so dolphins would not be caught in them. In 1984, President Reagan appointed her to the Marine Mammal Commission. Naturalist Konrad Lorenz came to observe the work at Sea Life Park. So did B.F. Skinner, whose daughter, Deborah, stayed on as a trainer. Social scientist Gregory Bateson spent eight years there observing how dolphins communicate. Advertisement 'Lads Before the Wind,' published in 1975, was Ms. Pryor's account of her adventures there. But it was her third book — her first was 'Nursing Your Baby' (1963), a book on how to nurse humans — that made her name. 'Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training,' first published in 1984, laid out the principles of positive reinforcement. It was both prescriptive and profound. Her cure for her mother's phone habits involved a practice called extinction. She stayed silent during the recitation of woes. But if her mother stopped ranting to inquire about Pryor's children or offer a benign comment, she would respond with enthusiasm. Within weeks, the complaining behavior had been extinguished. Karen Liane Wylie was born May 14, 1932, in Manhattan, the only child of Sally Ondek, a fashion model, and author Philip Wylie, whose bestselling 1943 essay collection, 'Generation of Vipers,' excoriated modern life. Karen grew up in Connecticut and Miami and was a born naturalist — the kind of child, her daughter said, who always had a frog in her pocket. With her father, she learned to snorkel and dive. At Cornell University, she wanted to major in ornithology but was told that women could not be accepted in the program because there was no place for them to go to the bathroom in the woods. She chose English instead, but she also took every natural history course she could. She kept a fish tank in her sorority, which intrigued a fellow student, a creative writing major named Taylor Allderdice Pryor, known as Tap, who was also ocean-obsessed. They married in 1954. Advertisement Taylor Pryor enlisted in the Marines, trained to be a helicopter pilot, and was posted to Oahu. By then the Pryors had three children and were raising pheasants to pay the bills, and Taylor Pryor had decided to become a marine biologist. He was studying sharks, but there was no place in Hawaii with a tank big enough to keep them. So he decided to build a marine park — a fairly novel idea in the early 1960s, when there were only a few on the mainland — and combine it with a research center. The Pryors sold Sea Life in 1971 and divorced the next year. In 1983, Karen Pryor married Jon Lindbergh, a deep sea diver and salmon farmer who was a son of aviator Charles Lindbergh. They divorced in the mid-1990s. In addition to her daughter, She leaves two sons, Tedmund and Michael; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. In the decades after 'Don't Shoot the Dog!' was published, Ms. Pryor held workshops for humans, including pilots, fishermen, and surgeons, using clickers as signals to help them perform tasks more efficiently. But it was dogs that really took to clicker training. Ms. Pryor didn't invent the practice, but she helped popularize and refine it, with conferences and an academy for dog trainers. 'So much of dog training is still about dominance," said Annie Grossman, the author of 'How to Train Your Dog With Love and Science' (2024). 'It's how we're treated, and so we treat our dogs that way. The genius of Karen Pryor is that she showed it doesn't have to be.' Advertisement When Pryor wrote the first edition of 'Don't Shoot the Dog!' — it is still in print today — she noted that while the term 'positive reinforcement' had seeped into the culture, she saw few examples of it being put into practice. 'In fact,' she wrote, 'most people don't understand it, or they would not behave so badly to the people around them.' This article originally appeared in
