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NEWS AND VIEWS

Editor: Nicholas Gould, 80 Cleveland Road, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 7AF, UK.
Phone and fax + 44 (0)1243 782803.

International Zoo News is published by the North of England Zoological Society, Chester Zoo, Caughall Road, Chester CH2 1LH, UK. This magazine is for the exchange of news, information and ideas between the zoos and aquariums of the world. By arrangement with the Editor, this page and IZN page 2 (see link above) highlight some of the features on aquariums in recent IZN issues. You can email Nicholas Gould at IZN directly from here: ngouldizn@aol.com

Audobon Aquarium of the Americas, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A.

The aquarium recently announced a number of rare births in its freshwater stingray breeding program. In April, four black peacock stingray (Potamotrygon leopoldi) and two otorongo (P. castexi) pups were born, the first of these species to be born at Audubon. The P. leopoldi births are the first captive breeding of this species, while the otorongo births are the second known captive births of their species. Meanwhile, breeding behaviors have been observed in the aquarium's jaguar stingrays (P. menchacai). If breeding is successful, the births will also be the first in captivity. In total, the aquarium has five species in its freshwater ray population. Since the breeding program began in 1993, more than 275 stingray pups from four different species have been born. The aquarium was also the first to breed the night sky black ray (P. henleii) in captivity.

Communiqué (American Zoo and Aquarium Association), July 2003

Deep Sea World, North Queensferry, Scotland, U.K.

Deep Sea World's `Outreach' programme has been so successful around the local Fife area that the team are now embarking on a nationwide tour of schools around Scotland. Outreach takes a `slice of life' out to groups to create living classrooms and has been phenomenally successful, visiting over 500 schools since the programme started in 2000. The team will take live animals, including small sharks, to schools in Dumfries, Aberdeen, Fort William, Stranraer and Inverness. Children will be able to hold a starfish, touch a spider crab and feel the weight of a shark's jaw. They will also be able to touch a reptile, such as Edna, Deep Sea World's grey rat snake. Education manager Paul Nixon comments: `We are delighted to bring Deep Sea World to schools who otherwise couldn't afford to come to the aquarium. We hope our interactive sessions with live animals such as hermit crabs, sea urchins and starfish will make school more enjoyable for pupils. The outreach team will be covering over 4,000 miles and bringing the programme to thousands of school children.'

Abridged from a Deep Sea World press release

Pittsburgh Zoo, Pennsylvania, U.S.A

Chuckles, the oldest Amazon river dolphin to live in captivity in North America, died on 20 February; he was in his 30s. The spirited and mischievous dolphin was a natural ambassador for the zoo's new aquarium, which opened in 2000 and gave him a new, spacious habitat nearly three times the size of his former tank. Visitors were often treated to a display of more than 30 behaviors that he routinely worked on with his trainers.

One of the oldest residents of the zoo, Chuckles received visitors with an enigmatic smile, hovering playfully in the bottle-green water. He was doing well in the new exhibit until two weeks before his death. He died during a physical examination by veterinarians to help discover the cause of a general malaise and loss of appetite. `We really didn't know he was dying,' says the zoo's director, Dr Barbara Baker. `He would go on and off food for periods throughout his life, when he would eat three fish one day and 15 fish the next day. We were hoping that was the case.' Preliminary examinations by veterinarians revealed kidney problems, for which he had a history.

Chuckles, who came to the zoo from Colombia in 1970, was estimated to be between 34 and 36 years old; previously, the oldest living Amazon dolphin in captivity was 18. Chuckles gained some notoriety in 1996 when he bit a woman's hand when she reached over to pet him. He released her hand after her male companion poked him with an umbrella. Chuckles was not injured in the incident.

The zoo has no plans to obtain another specimen of this highly endangered species.

Tribune-Review (21 February 2002), with additional details from the Pittsburgh Zoo website

Even before it opened to the public, one of the park's goals was the cultivation of giant species of seaweed. At the time of opening, an attempt was made to cultivate small and medium species in a 65m3 tank, but not enough fresh sea water and direct sunlight were available, and so we chalked up a history of failures because of the inability to meet the three conditions of water motion, light, and nutrition.

Taking into account these past failures, the tank was rebuilt in February 2000. On the advice of Monterey Bay Aquarium, a piston-type wave machine was constructed. A total of 15.4 kW of lighting with a composition close to that of sunlight – supplemented with red light, which has a tendency to be weakened underwater – was provided. After construction was completed, the wave machine was adjusted so as to synchronize the waves, and at first only fish were introduced into the tank. After two weeks seaweed from close to the Japanese shore was introduced, and it grew surprisingly well. After eight months of `breaking in' the tank in this way, giant kelp from California, which can reach 50 m in length, was planted in it. It grew very well. Ten or 20 fronds can grow five cm a day, a total of 50_100 cm. Thus a plant can achieve a growth of 15–30 m a month. Frequent pruning is necessary to keep the fronds from becoming entangled. In nine months a total of 200 m was pruned off, an average of 22 m a month.

Kelp is large and grows fast, so that it uses up the nutrients in the tank at a prodigious rate. Sooner or later some kind of deficiency is bound to occur. This can be overcome by frequent water changes, but there is a limit to how much seawater the park can handle (we can replace no more than 25% of the tank water with fresh seawater every month). It is necessary to supply the deficient elements, but seaweed is much more sensitive to water quality than are fish, so supplementing the necessary elements by rule of thumb is not an option. As a safety measure, it was thus decided to use the pruned fronds and the pieces that fell off naturally as fertilizer. The seaweed itself contains the necessary balance of elements, so if it decays and is dissolved in the water, the elements can be recycled in the right proportions.

Gradually various sea life multiplied in the tank and continually scavenged the dead fronds, to the extent that the filter has not been cleaned in two years, but no problems have arisen. The pH, salinity. NO3-N, PO4-P, iodine, etc., were measured twice a month. In the beginning iodine and manganese were insufficient, but these were added and gradually their values stabilized. But general indicators of water quality such as NO3-N and PO4-P continued to rise even after one year, and silicon and salinity also showed a similar trend. An investigation revealed that the cause of this problem was the tap water that was added regularly to the tank to replace water lost to evaporation. We intend to install a water purifier as soon as possible.

English summary of article in Japanese by Hiroshi Arai, published in Animals and Zoos Vol. 54, No. 4 (April 2002)

A penguin develops a foot infection. A seahorse with a swim bladder problem must be X-rayed. Or maybe it’s just time for the sloth’s annual physical. With more than 8,000 animals at Shedd Aquarium, the 11 members of the Veterinary Services Department — veterinarians, animal-healthcare technicians, water-quality technicians, a microbiologist and a chemist — keep busy. To provide the best care to an increasingly diverse collection, Vet Services recently moved into a new $1.5 million animal healthcare center. The 3,000-square-foot [280-m2] complex includes a hospital and pathology laboratory. An adjacent 2,600-square-foot [240-m2] microbiology and water-quality lab will be completed later this year.

‘As plans for Amazon Rising shaped up, and we decided to exhibit terrestrial animals such as birds, marmosets and sloths, it became evident that we needed a more sophisticated healthcare facility,’ explains Dr Marty Greenwell, director of veterinary services and one of the center’s designers. For years, he says, a portion of the water-quality lab was set aside for examinations, treatments and necropsies — workable when vets were dealing only with fishes and other small aquatic animals. But larger vertebrates have more complicated healthcare needs and present the potential for infectious diseases. ‘To maintain a high standard of healthcare,’ Greenwell says, ‘we needed something more akin to a small-animal hospital.’

Only a few aquariums in the country have full-scale animal hospitals, and Shedd’s state-of-the-art facility is one of the largest. The busiest area is the spacious examination room, which includes a pharmacy. On a table that accommodates both aquatic and terrestrial animals, vets can examine and treat patients. ‘We do regular physical exams on all the animal groups except the fishes and invertebrates,’ says Greenwell. ‘That includes the mammals, the reptiles and amphibians, and the birds.’ From river otters to river turtles, the schedule of preventive care spans the year. ‘When we do the penguins,’ Greenwell says, ‘we have to spread it over two to three weeks.’

X-rays are taken almost daily, for routine exams to have a baseline, and for injuries or illnesses to pinpoint the problem. They are especially useful for diagnosing fish ailments. ‘We have small film that we use on the little ones, like seahorses,’ Greenwell says. Why X-ray seahorses? ‘They tend to have hyperinflation of the swim bladder, which makes them buoyant, and they can’t move down from the surface. To confirm that and to direct the needle to remove excess gas, we take X-rays.’

The new hospital includes a gleaming surgical suite, enabling the medical staff to perform operations on site for the first time. ‘Historically, we would schedule a procedure and transport an animal to one of the neighboring zoos or to a private animal hospital. Now we have a sterile operating room, and either our staff vets or a specialist can come in and do a surgical procedure. We don’t have to worry about wound contamination, the logistics of transporting an animal, or fitting the procedure into another facility’s schedule.’

Greenwell is especially proud of two new high-tech pieces of equipment. The video endoscopy unit enables the medical team to observe a presurgical exploration together ‘rather than taking turns to peer through an eyepiece,’ he says. ‘We can all see what’s going on and discuss it to achieve consensus on the spot.’ A new anesthesia machine features a vaporizer for sevoflurane, ‘the newest and safest veterinary anesthetic to date,’ he points out.

Happily, there have been no major operations since Vet Services moved into the new hospital. Greenwell recently did minor surgery on a foot-long Amazon river turtle with a shell problem. With the anesthetized turtle on the treatment table, Greenwell peeled away a thin layer of shell to clean out a pocket of infection. After a week recovering in the warm, humidified microclimate of an incubator, the turtle was returned to his Amazon Rising habitat. Soon aquatic patients will recuperate in a ‘wet ward’ containing tanks of different sizes. A dry ward for birds, small mammals and terrestrial reptiles and amphibians is already in use.

Across the hall from the hospital is the pathology area where, on a recent visit, a technician was performing a necropsy on a batfish. This is a controlled area, with a pass room between the common corridor and the area where work with blood and tissue samples takes place. Fixtures, equipment and walls can easily be disinfected, and the pass room features a shower where staff members can wash after a procedure. The nearby microbiology lab, still under construction, will also include staff offices. ‘This hospital is the answer to our need for more appropriate and sophisticated facilities’, says Dr Jeff Boehm, vice president of conservation and veterinary services. ‘We are able to treat animals in a facility where radiology, surgery, diagnostics and treatment are all adjacent, but each has a well-designed, dedicated space.’

Abridged from Karen Furnweger in WaterShedd Vol. 23, No. 3 (Summer 2002).

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