Steller's Sea Lions

snowleopard

snowleopard

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15+ year member
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I am intrigued as to where Steller's sea lions can be found in captivity, as ISIS lists only the Fukushima Aquarium in Japan, Moscow Zoo, Oregon Zoo, Alaska Sea Life Center and the Vancouver Aquarium as the only 5 establishments on the planet that have such rare animals.

According to ISIS the Vancouver Aquarium has 9 females, although there are zero on display. Perhaps they are held in a behind-the-scenes pool or in an off-site area, but the only sea lion that had recently been on display passed away just over 7 months ago:

Beloved Steller sea lion, Tag, passes
 
Harderwijk dolphinarium in the Netherlands, certainly had a group a few years ago, whether they still do i don't know.
 
Harderwijk is still keeping and breeding them. Most of the youngsters were send to Japan. And there is a dolphinarium in eastern europe, lativa, I think, which is keeping Steller sealions.
 
Marineland d'Antibes

Le Marineland d'Antibes (France) is too still keeping Steller's Sea Lion, since 2008. They are two males (Boris and Laska) who arrived from Harderwijk (Nederland)
 
during the presentation in harderwijk i once heard that they also send animals to canada. I forgot the name, so i'm not sure if it was vancouver..

The group in harderwijk is pretty stable. I don't know the exact number, but i guess they have about 1,4 breeding animals with their offspring.
 
The Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut also has Stellars. They have 4 or 5 females (on display co-habitating with N. fur seals and a harbor seal), a juvenile male and an enormous male named Kodiak- last I saw him he was nearly 2000 lbs.
 
Mystic also received some Stellars from Vancouver recently and they are going to be redoing the marine mammal enclosures at Vancouver as well. This may be why there are currently none on display at Vancouver Aquarium.
 
@loxodonta: for years now there has been only the single male (named Tag) on display at the Vancouver Aquarium, as all of the female sea lions have been in off-exhibit or off-site pools. Those particular sea lions have been used in studies by the University of British Columbia and have not been seen by the public, and now the male is deceased.

The other institutions that currently have Steller's sea lions illustrates that either ISIS is incorrect or that those zoos and aquariums simply have not sent information to ISIS.
 
snowleopard said:
@loxodonta: for years now there has been only the single male (named Tag) on display at the Vancouver Aquarium, as all of the female sea lions have been in off-exhibit or off-site pools. Those particular sea lions have been used in studies by the University of British Columbia and have not been seen by the public, and now the male is deceased.

The other institutions that currently have Steller's sea lions illustrates that either ISIS is incorrect or that those zoos and aquariums simply have not sent information to ISIS.
Click to expand...

Will they have stellars on display when they renovate the marine mammal exhibits?
 
The funding was approved for $80 million in 2006, and the aquarium was supposedly expanding from 2.1 acres to almost 4 acres in total. However, there was an article in the local newspaper a few months ago stating that because of the economic recession and increase in production costs the aquarium's proposed expansion is now set at $120 million and so far construction has yet to begin and it is no longer a 100% guarantee. I've emailed the aquarium twice but have received no response, but a friend of mine recently visited and he said there has been zero construction so far. Originally the expansion was going to be completed by late 2009 so it would be finished in time for the February 2010 Winter Olympics, but things are looking doubtful now. I'm sure that there will not be Steller's sea lions on display if the expansion does get approved, but all of the plans, blueprints, and layouts of the exhibit design have been posted by me on the Vancouver Aquarium thread here at ZooChat.
 
Zebraduiker said:
Harderwijk is still keeping and breeding them. Most of the youngsters were send to Japan. And there is a dolphinarium in eastern europe, lativa, I think, which is keeping Steller sealions.
Click to expand...

They are kept at a aquarium and dolphinarium in Lithuania (Klaipeda), these origin from Russia I believe (Moskau or Kaliningrad).This species was formerly kept in pretty much all zoo collections of the old Soviet Union.
 
I saw a whole giant rock full of Stellar's sea lions while on a short cruise in Alaska. They are fantastic to see in the wild! I was surprised at how different they look from California sea lions. I wonder, maybe Alaska Sea Life Center has Stellar's.
 
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