dwhatley;89841 said:
Thanks Carol & Jean,
We have seen a slight shift in her behavior this week so I think she will be coming out soon. I hope it is because she is giving up on the eggs and will still be around for a few more weeks but ...
Jean, I noticed you often mentioning your catch, show and release program for the octos. I love the concept. How many other critters do you do this with and how do you go about it? To clarify, do employees actually do the release or do you have regular fishermen/collectors that both catch and release for you?
We do catch show and release with quite a few critters, Moki (fish!), Dogfish, Carpet Sharks, 7 Gill Sharks (although generally we only have them when they've been brought in injured, so it's a case of treat, show and release!), Trumpeter (fish!) Giant 7 Armed Stars among many others. Animals that tend to stay with us forever are either captive bred (Seahorses, Pipefish) or are convalescents that will no longer survive in the wild eg Spike one of our Leatherjackets, who came in with just the worst fungal infection I have ever seen, his defensive spine was badly damaged by the fungus and now is too soft/brittle to be of any use to him.
We have a couple of local fishermen who help us out from time to time, but mainly the staff catch and release often with the help of the lab staff. We are a tiny aquarium attached to a university so we don't have separate husbandry/front of house/education/maintenance teams we do a bit of all of it! (check out
http://www.otago.ac.nz/marinestudies for more info about us!). BUT we can call upon the expertise of the adjoining lab staff and grad students (many of our staff are grad students) and academics.
cheers
J