SeaWorld San Diego SeaWorld San Diego News

First Emperor Penguin hatching in many years.

Emperor Penguin Born at SeaWorld
October 5, 2010 San Diego News, Local, California and National News - SignOnSanDiego.com By Michael Stetz

SAN DIEGO — SeaWorld Sea Diego is the only facility in North America to house and successfully breed emperor penguins. On September 12 the organization celebrated its first hatching in eight years. The chick is being hand-raised on small pieces of herring and a special formula of ground-up fish, krill, vitamins and minerals. The chick (gender unknown), eats about 10 percent of its body weight at each of its four daily feedings, and is being kept in a 56 degree nursery with stuffed penguin toys for companions. The park has about 30 of the birds, some of which are the original ones collected in the 1970s. At age 35, the parents are among the older penguins on exhibit. Lauren DuBois, SeaWorld’s assistant curator of birds, said lighting is particularly important in a successful breeding. The shorter days that come with winter are what trigger the penguins to begin their mating ritual, and many of the female emperor penguins at SeaWorld San Diego lay eggs annually. There were 10 laid this year. Staff places all the eggs in incubators, and this one proved to be fertile. SeaWorld’s first successful hatching was in 1980. 21 emperor chicks have survived there. While not endangered, there is concern that they could be one day, particularly if they lose more of their habitat and food to climate change.
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There is a new dog and cat show that is set for the holidays, they didn't change a lot of things but some of its new. They now have a kangaroo and two emus in the show. The kangaroo is brought out five minutes after the show ends when half of the stadium is empty and they let people walk up and pet him. He is only three months old.

Someone is building something huge by Sea World and just cleared a thirty plus acre lot and I think it is on Sea World's land. I don't know whats going there but they are doing a lot of work leveling the land at the current moment. I hope its part of Sea World, I would love to see them expand.
 
Does anyone know the future of the commerson's dolphin at Sea World? It would make sense if they imported some, if not all the animals from Japan to breed with the females in San Diego. And the females in Japan with the males in Orlando.
 
Sea World still has some breeding opportunities with their own animals, but in the long term, they will eventually need to work with aquariums in Japan if they want to increase their gene pool. SW has had success with artificial insemination with this specie, so that might help a lot if importations can't be done.
 
I'm not familiar with the Sea World program, nor prime breeding age for orcas. But is Shouka a breeding candidate at Sea World?
 
Shouka is a great candidate for SW's breeding programme. She is not related to any of the SW killer whales, so her genes are very valuable. She is 19 years old, females in captivity tend to have their first calf at a very young age but she's still young and capable of breeding. Shouka has participated in some births so she will be for sure a good mother.

The only drawback is that SW will have to be very careful with the male who would sire her future calves, because most of the males under SW care are related to many other orcas. Artificial insemination might be a great option for her, but Shouka was not very cooperative with that procedure during her stay in Vallejo.
 
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Seaworld has announce that they are opening a new aquatica in San Diego next year since they acquired Knott's Soak City Waterpark. The theme animal for this one looks to be flamingo from a photo posted on their facebook page.
 
It has been a long time since anyone talked about sea world.

First, sea world is going to get a water park aquatica. They bought knotts berry farm's san diego water park and hopefully it will be nice. I noticed that one of the aquaticas has a slide through a dolphin exhibit and I am hoping for the same thing.

SeaWorld bringing Aquatica water park to San Diego - Los Angeles Times

Sea world is also working on there next project, Explorers Reef. It is a complete change of the front entrance and will include four touch pools with 5000 fish according to the sea world back stage people. Its suppose to take 16 months and should start any day now. The guy said it starts after the christmas celebration is over with ended on the 7th.

SeaWorld San Diego to undergo massive interactive front gate transformation with Explorers Reef

I personally like the four touch pools but I don't like the looks of the stores and the new entrance. I found it weird that they said it was the biggest project that sea world has done in decades.

Manta is a fun ride and the lines are already very small, making it easy to get on in ten or so minutes, even on weekends. The new ray exhibit looks just like the old one but there are no more morey eels out.

This week sea world started advertising that they have spotted eagle rays in the journey to atlantis aquarium. Joining cownose rays, southern stingrays and leopard sharks. This is the old commerson's dophin exhibit, they are back stage and can't be seen anymore. Hopefully they are going to aquatica.

At animal connections, (old horse barn) they have llamas, miniature horses, beaver, sloth, some spoonbills, indian crested porcupine, and a water monitor on display. Additionally, they have several animals they bring out including a flemish giant rabbit, an african pygmy hedgehog, a desert tortoise, two small american alligators, some type of legless lizard, a eurasian eagle-owl and two capys that are being sent to the SD zoo.

there is a backstage pass that takes you to see a hooded crane, lesser flamingo flamboyance, om your way to pet a Humboldt Penguin in the off exhibit Humboldt penguin pen with about 50 birds. By far worth every penny, it was around 20 bucks. Then you go to the shark lab and pet a few species of small sharks which they said will be in the new exhibit at the entrance when it opens.

I think that will be all for now.
 
Is there any indication that the San Diego Sea World may rebuild their penguin complex into the penguin ride thing that they are building in Orlando?
 
there is no plans for any other construction until the entrance is done according to the backstage guys there. But typically anything that gets built in orlando ends up in SD in a couple of years. The penguin habitat in San Diego does not have any rockhoppers since they said the SD site is a lot colder so that they can have emperor penguins. They used to have them several years ago but transferred them since they were not responding well. SD also has kings, gentoos, macaroni and adelies in the exhibit with the capacity for 600 birds. Outside they have humboldts (off exhibit) and in front of the penguin exhibit outside is magellanics.

In the same building they have the opposite pole with rhinoceros anklet, common murre and tufted puffins.

I personally hope they don't add any more rides. I would rather see more penguin species, guess I will have to wait for the SD zoo to add african penguins.
 
Commerson's Dolphins

I'm very curious as to what they want to do with their Commerson's dolphins. SeaWorld only has 7 left, with both remaining females in San Diego and only one young enough to breed, and she's only unrelated to one male at Aquatica Orlando. I suppose they will either incorporate them into the new San Diego Aquatica or move them to join the 4 males in Orlando. I really hope they try breeding the unrelated animals somehow (maybe through A.I.?) before it's too late, it's such a unique and fun species. I wonder the same about SeaWorld's pilot whales too. It'd be terrible to see them slowly fade away with all the other species disappearing from American zoological institutions (which I squarely blame on the incompetence of the AZA, who I loathe and despise with seething hate).

I had quite the adventure trying to see the Commerson's when I revisited the park last summer (it had been about a decade since I had last been). I'm a hardcore animal enthusiast and had a mission to see them more than anything else while I was there, but since they had been moved off display and rumored to have left that proved difficult. But I was determined. After two visits to the park and talking around with animal care staff, I decided I needed to get behind the scenes at the holding and rehab area, so I paid extra for a backstage tour which involved randomly visiting 2 of 4 off display areas. With some luck I happened on a tour that went into the marine mammal holding facility (and the shark lab and bird holding area where they were teaching a flamingo chick to like water, lol). I looked around the marine mammal area and they had a maternity pool of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, a pair of Pacific bottlenose dolphins, several rescued harbor seals, and a pair of orphaned baby California sea lions that were being bottle fed by a specialist. After the tour finished and everyone was leaving I asked the specialist if the Commerson's were still there. She said yes but that they were in the back in a more climate controlled pool. I asked if I could see them and she said no because they were removing a bottlenose dolphin in a pool next to them to perform check ups and relocating him. She then excused herself and hurried to the back. Disappointed I left and they locked the gate behind me, but then I heard the noise of the Cirque De La Mer show starting in the stadium across the walkway and looked up. I decided to slip into the stadium and climbed to the top of the bleachers (with quite a few spectators glaring at me and mouthing "get down!"). I got to the top and walked around until I found a place I could peer out and FINALLY there they were, in a shaded area in the back, swimming around excited and agitated since the pool next to them was drained and a crane was lowering a dolphin stretcher into it and keepers were all around. It was interesting to watch as they put the bottlenose dolphin in the stretcher, raised him out of the drained pool, set him down to do checkups on him, and then moved him to another pool. And I got to see the hidden Commerson's too, lol.

Anyway, that was my summer SeaWorld adventure. I also know some hand gestures used to train some of the animals, so I got Ulisses the orca to wave at the crowd while he was waiting for his keeper in the side pool and got a dolphin to squirt water at the kid next to me at the dolphin lagoon exhibit. It was a fun trip.
 
WhiteTiger said:
(which I squarely blame on the incompetence of the AZA, who I loathe and despise with seething hate).
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That seems a little bit over-the-top, if you don't mind me saying. The phasing out of many species in AZA zoos can be a burden to people who love a diversity of species. I love that too, but the AZA wants to focus on having healthy and large populations of certain animals. Let's use Ocelots (A species the AZA is focusing on) and Margays (a phase-out species) for an example. The AZA wants to have a healthy breeding population of Ocelots in U.S. zoos. In the case of Margays, there is too little of them left in U.S. zoos to try and rebuild a large population (On a side note, are there any Margays left in U.S. zoos?). The AZA is phasing out Margays, so that when the Margays die out, institutions that held Margays can now focus on Ocelots.
 
Previously injured orca Nakai has apparently recovered from his jaw wound: Injured orca performing again at SeaWorld - San Diego, California News Station - KFMB Channel 8 - cbs8.com

And while not exactly SeaWorld, a nearby hotel exploded from some people trying to make drugs inside: Explosion at hotel near SeaWorld San Diego injures 3 | Fox News


As for my position on the AZA, well this may be the wrong thread for this, but I'll post it anyway. I should explain it's a passionate issue for me.

I firmly believe that as many species as possible should be represented in zoos and aquariums in this country. My dislike of the AZA and it's practices go back to when I got involved with American zoos/aquariums back in the 90s. The roadblocks the AZA likes to throw up exchanging species and phasing them out is slowly destroying the diversity and collections in American zoological institutions (the one mentioned a lot here on ZooChat is hoofstock), which to me is outrageous and defeats a major point of having such things as quality zoos. The reason some species (like margays) began disappearing in the first place was due to poor AZA management. I grew up in Europe (military parents stationed there) and first got hooked on animals while visiting zoos in Germany, which still have very diverse species collections. The wide variety of animals represented is what got me interested in wildlife, so it's tragic to see American zoos downsizing, for what I see as bad reasons. American institutions have the space to accommodate and expand both existing (or now gone) species and new breeding populations too, but it's not what the AZA wants. I also have some European connections who think American institutions are being ridiculous for getting rid of so many species, especially endangered ones, since species diversity is a major educational and conservation point of zoos (and also because America has lots of space). I agree with them, while I don't agree with the AZA at all. IMO their approach to species management is ridiculous and ruining the American zoo. Now most American institutions are moving toward nearly identical species collections. So when it comes to the where the AZA is concerned this day and age, I say hooray for private institutions, lol. I try to be positive though, at least there are still private places with some of these phase out species, and I have hope one day they will come back.
 
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