Heard something you think is NEWS worthy? Email us and let us know at website@imata.org.
In memorandum
7 September 2010
Edwin Gardner CHARLESTON - Edwin Gardner, 64, a devoted father and husband who worked as a writer, teacher, dolphin trainer, community advocate, and planner for his native state of Tennessee, died Friday, July 23, from injuries sustained when his bicycle and an SUV collided.
After teaching high school English in Washington, D.C., he started an educational program at the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon, Fla. While there, he helped in the creation of one of their premier educational programs, DolphinLab, which is a large part of whom they are today.
Edwin moved to Charleston, SC in 1992, where he was the first development director for the South Carolina Aquarium. His directing efforts helped to establish the Aquarium on a reclaimed brown site. Edwin’s values of conservation and education continue in the Aquarium today.
Gardner’s lively curiosity and passion for the outdoors drove his community involvement starting with the Outward Bound program’s early development in America. He was an accomplished kayaker at a time when the most common way to acquire a kayak was to build one. In 1995, Gardner founded the New Charleston Mosquito Fleet to reconnect inner city children with Charleston's history of boat building and boating. He was president of the Harleston Village Neighborhood Association and a leader on the transportation subcommittee of the Peninsula Task Force. As founder of the Heritage Strategy Group, he wrote plans for recreational areas and scenic byways, balancing conservation and business interests. He was the primary author of the Tennessee 2020 Vision for Parks and Landscape that is the state's principal park planning document. In recent years, he advocated ceaselessly for bicycling and walkable communities.
Survivors include his wife, Whitney Powers, daughter, Olive Kesler Powers Gardner, and sisters Gretchen Gardner of Ann Arbor, Mich. and Patricia Campbell of Nashville.
Marineland of the Pacific Reunion 2010
3 September 2010
Former employees, guests and friends of Marineland of the Pacific are invited to attend the "2010 Marineland Reunion" on 25 September 2010 in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA.
The event is geared towards remembering Marineland (1954-1987) and it's dedication to marine animals and education and marinelife conservation.
This is a family event and is open to anyone who holds a special memory of the park.
IMATA Vice-President Eric Gaglione will answer questions about the 2010 IMATA Conference in real-time, live from New England Aquarium during a streaming video chat on 31 August at 8:30 PM EST. For more information, please click here.
IMATA Conference Deadlines Approaching
14 August 2010
Online abstract submission for the 2010 IMATA Conference will close on 31 August 2010. Additionally, discounted conference registration will end on 31 August 2010 and regular registration rates for conference attendees will go into effect on 1 September 2010. To submit an abstract or to register now, please click here.
Discounts are available on a limited number of conference rooms at the Seaport Hotel on a first come, first served basis. To take advantage of the IMATA rate, please visit http://www.seaportboston.com/?promo=IMATA
IMATA Animal Training Seminar Series
7 August 2010
Back by popular demand ... IMATA's Accreditation Committee is pleased to continue the Animal Training seminar series.
Ken Ramirez will be the instructor for two workshops:
An Introduction to Animal Training Date: Friday, December 3, 2010 (9:00 am – 6:00 pm) Location: Seaport Hotel, Boston
Course Description: This seminar is an introduction to operant conditioning. It is designed for the beginning trainer who seeks a solid introduction to training theory and its practical applications. The seminar will also be useful for supervisors and managers who are looking for effective ways of teaching these concepts to new trainers. This is a repeat of a previous sold-out pre-conference seminar conducted by Ken Ramirez.
Advanced Training Concepts Date: Thursday, December 9, 2010 (9:00 am – 6:00 pm) Location: Seaport Hotel, Boston
Course description: This seminar introduces advanced training concepts and provides an overview of reinforcement schedules, aversive stimuli, reinforcers & punishers, dealing with aggression, and general problem solving. This seminar is a natural follow-up to the Introduction to Animal Training seminar, however the first class is not a pre-requisite for taking this more advanced class.
The tuition for each seminar is $75.00 per person.
(IMATA members can receive a discount of $125.00 for both.)
IMATA is proud to present a replay for the March 8th broadcast of IMATA TV!
IMATA TV is a live, interactive forum for questions and answers regarding marine animal care and training. For this installment, we hosted a panel of employment representatives from Dolphin Quest, SAIC, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, and the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program.
Dr. Nélio Baptista Barros passed away on 10 February 2010 in Tillamook, Oregon after a battle with cancer. He was born in Vila Velha, ES, Brazil on 23 January 1960. He received his BSc in Biological Oceanography in 1982 (Brazil) and then moved to the United States where he received his Master’s degree from Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami in Biological Oceanography in July 1987, and earned his PhD from RSMAS under Dr. Dan Odell in 1993. He worked as a marine mammal consultant at SeaWorld in Orlando during 1991-1999, and as a Research Biologist and Senior Research Biologist at Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute during 1994-2000. He joined Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, and served as Program Manager for Mote’s Stranding Investigations Program during 2000-2006, creating a model stranding response program for the southeastern U.S., and developing a laboratory for cetacean stomach content analyses. Dr. Barros then moved to Oregon and worked with Portland State University as a coordinator for the northern Oregon and southern Washington Stranding Network. He was an expert in feeding ecology of small and large cetaceans using stomachs and tissue samples to examine prey and trophic level interactions. He contributed to field studies throughout the world including the southeast coast of the United States, Hong Kong, Brazil, South Africa and the western United States. He authored or co-authored 34 peer-reviewed papers or book chapters, and helped many others with their publications, especially Latin American colleagues, through his constructive reviews and by serving as Editor of The Latin American Journal of Aquatic Mammals. He was called upon often by institutions and government wildlife management agencies to provide information on the feeding habits of cetaceans and pinnipeds during Unusual Mortality Events and mass stranding events. He examined small structures including fish otoliths and cephalopod parts to determine ingested prey in stranded animals and later expanded this work by utilizing tissue samples for stable isotope analysis to determine longer term trends in trophic food webs. He contributed significantly to our understanding of the importance of sound-producing fish in the diets of bottlenose dolphins, and filled in many gaps in our knowledge of the biology and ecology of difficult-to-study pygmy and dwarf sperm whales.
Dr. Barros was an avid organic gardener and loved to harvest eggs from his flock of free-range chickens (“his girls”). He was also a remarkable baker often surprising colleagues and friends with warm chocolate chip cookies hot from the oven. He travelled often for both work and pleasure. Along with his native Portuguese, he was fluent in English, Spanish and French and had been studying Russian.
He was a remarkable friend and mentor to many and will always be remembered for his smile, generous spirit and his diligent work on behalf of marine mammals all over the globe.
He is survived by his life partner Fred Casey, and his mother, father, brother and sister in Brazil.
In lieu of flowers, contributions in Nélio’s name may be made to help repair the vandalized Cape Meares Lighthouse and Wildlife Refuge, near his home in Oregon. To donate, please go to: http://capemeareslighthouse.org/. Alternatively, donations may be made to help support the operations of Mote Marine Laboratory’s Stranding Investigations Program. Checks may be sent to Mote Marine Laboratory, 1600 Ken Thompson Parkway, Sarasota, FL 34236, with a notation: “In memory of Nélio Barros.”
Dolphin Research Center (DRC) President and CEO Jayne Shannon Rodriguez passed away on 22 February 2010, after a short illness.
After a successful career as a trainer at New England Aquarium and Flipper's Sea School (later the Institute for Delphinid Research), Jayne co-founded DRC with Mandy Rodriguez in 1984. Together they established the strong foundation on which DRC would grow. Her tremendous spirit and determination inspired many to provide the best care and home for dolphins, to learn all that we can about these amazing animals, and to reach out to the world with this knowledge.
Jayne was a longtime supporter of IMATA and, in 1981, served IMATA's Board of Directors as the organization's first female Officer. Her leadership style combined hands-on guidance with open-hearted caring, a no-nonsense attitude with generous support and encouragement.
A memorial fund is being established in Jayne's name at Dolphin Research Center. For more information, please visit www.dolphins.org.
In Memoriam
14 February 2010
IMATA is saddened to learn of the passing of Ron Schusterman.
Ronald J. Schusterman passed away on 11 February 2010. He was Marine Biologist Emeritus and Adjunct Professor of Ocean Sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Professor Emeritus at California State University at Hayward. He was educated at Brooklyn College and then Florida State University, where he was mentored by Winthrop Kellogg and introduced to the study of chimpanzees and dolphins. Ron took his first research position at the original Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Behavior in Orange Park, Florida, where he investigated the cognitive and social behavior of chimpanzees, gibbons, and monkeys. In 1963, he moved to the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in order to develop the first laboratory in North America devoted primarily to the study of the behavior and sensory physiology of pinnipeds. At SRI, Ron helped to debunk the notion that pinnipeds echolocated like dolphins and bats, and embarked on a research program dealing with vision and hearing in pinnipeds. Ron and his sea lions relocated to the Ecological Field Station at California State University at Hayward in 1971, where Ron served as a professor of Psychology and Biology. He began working on an ambitious research program involving a gestural artificial sign language with sea lions. In 1985, Ron moved this program to the University of California's Long Marine Laboratory (LML) in Santa Cruz. Here he continued to explore the sensory systems, perception, cognition, and communication of marine mammals in the lab and in field studies.
Ron’s nearly 50-year career in marine mammal science was overwhelmingly productive, with pioneering work in many different areas of sensory perception and learning. Ron is also extremely well known in the field of Comparative Psychology for his experimental work on language learning and the foundations of complex cognition in animals, as well as for studies of mother-offspring bonding during early development and into adulthood, and studies of reward expectancies and contingencies in children, non-human primates, and marine mammals. Many in the community may know that he used his extensive knowledge of conditioning and learning theory to develop some of the first, most creative, and most enduring approaches to training marine mammals in captivity.
Ron was a founding member of the Society for Marine Mammalogy and a fellow of the Animal Behavior Society, Acoustical Society of America, the American Psychological Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition to the time he spent at LML, Ron regularly spent time writing and teaching at other institutions - including Columbia University, the Aquarium for Wildlife Conservation in New York, and the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria.
IMATA TV
29 January 2010
IMATA is proud to present a replay for the the first-ever live broadcast of IMATA TV! IMATA TV is a series of "live" online video streams that will be aired throughout 2010. We hope IMATA TV will become a welcome forum for questions and answers regarding marine animal care and training.
In May 2006, the IMATA Board approved the following position which supports the termination of drive fisheries:
IMATA The International Marine Animal Trainers Association (IMATA) takes a strong position on the Japanese drive fisheries, which are debated frequently internationally. IMATA condemns the inhumane killing of dolphins and other cetaceans in the Japanese drive fisheries. IMATA members care deeply about dolphins and whales. Our mission and our work every day is to connect people and whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals to foster understanding, caring and respect, and to help preserve and protect their ocean environments.
Ken Ramirez will be the instructor for two workshops: