Saturday, February 25, 2012

Vintage Miami Seaquarium

1955







1964

2 comments:

Greg May said...

KING OF AQUARIA says: "I saw Jim Kline in the photos of the Main Tank show. For some reason Jimmy and Adolph Frohn never got along. Adolph was the man who trained the first porpoise at Marine Studios back in the 50's. Jim Kline - after decking the manager of the Seaquarium on the Top Deck of the Main Tank after an argument - went to work for a little marine park in Panama City Beach called Gulf World."

Wade G. Burck said...

King,
I think sea mammal trainers are just temperamental(if you ever met Jim Alexander you would know what I was talking about) by nature.
One summer when the Marineland boy's were in the middle of a staff meeting, discussing how they were going to deal with Nootka's newest escapade, I walked in and told Bill Robert's, "it's none of my business, and you surely know more about Orca's then I do, but I think the problem is you are not feeding them enough." Bill, who had enough problems at the moment and didn't need my shit replied, "what the hell are you talking about?" I explained my "theory." I told him, "normally they use a bucket and half of fish for each animal per show, which equals nine bucket's of fish each at the end of a 6 show day. When they don't work because Nooka is pitching a fit, they only get 6 fish each, 4 mackerel and 2 herring when they return to the holding tank. I didn't think that was right, so each night for the past two nights when I come to check the tigers and elephants, I throw 50 lb's of fish in the tank for each whale." Jesus, King eight trainer's jumped up tipping their chairs over and tried coming over the conference table at me yelling all kind's of nasty words at me. Ducking flying clip boards thrown at my head, it was all I could do to explain that I was just joking and I didn't really feed them any damn fish. It's just sea mammal trainer's. They are just naturally testy prima donna's, that's all. :)

Wade