Dugongs at Sydney Aquarium? » Sydney Aquarium

06-10-2008

The fact is to build new leopard seal facilities cost us 7.5 million just for the leopard seal facilities, i think you'll find not many zoo's would fork out that amount of money for one species of seal. There isn't a high enough stranding rate to justify other zoo's having facilities laid out so we'll be in the same situation as before. I think that the view that just because we have a pair of them we should breed them is true of the past but not the zoo of today, even more so when dealing with rescue/rehab animals

06-10-2008

Fair enough, zooworker and PAT, a good explanation.
How do you prevent them from breeding? Are they kept separate?

06-10-2008

Simply contraceptive implants, same as many species. The two are kept together, sometimes seperate, we do that to reflect what would occur in the wild, which is mainly living by themselves, however as another animal is enrichment majority of time they are kept together, we do however have the ability to seperate them if the need arises.

07-10-2008

I agree with PAT's idea, in the mean time Taronga will be a great facility on hand just in case another needs a home,

07-10-2008

back to the aquarium, does this swap to dugongs mean that they will no longer take in rescue case seals? if they stop taking these seals, becuase i belive that the majority of the seams they had came in as rescue cases, who will? does ocean world manly keep seals?

07-10-2008

hmmmm, just asking could Taronga possibly take over this role?

07-10-2008

Taronga has taken rescue seals many times, i point out the two leopards, and no manly stopped keeping seals quite a while ago. With GSO we now have facilites for many more seals so that will not be an issue, at the moment we are minding seals from other facilities as well as our own so there will be no issue there. Most of the seals at sydney aquarium are retired from other facilities.

14-10-2008

back to the leopard seals shortly. taronga zoo has been studying this species in-situ for many years now. just because you have two seals in an ex-situ situation doesnt mean that breeding becomes an essential research component.

14-10-2008

Very true, the leopard seals at the zoo in the past such as Brooke have been used for other areas of reserch that animal training is required for, e.g. shape or colour recognition and other such things. Due the highly successful reserch conducted by the AMMRC breeding is not a priority, also i will point out to all those who believe that studying breeding behaviour in captive situations is viable i will point out that in no way does a captive situation fully reflect a wild situation due to lack of options in terms of mates, lack of selective conditions such as levels of food, temperature and so on and also the constraints of captivity and i say that in the nicest possible way mean that it's easy for two animals to come into contact, so because of that relying on research from captive situations if not viable.

02-12-2008

Does anyone have any hints on when this could be occuring?
I was at Sydney Aquarium on Saturday and the seals were off display for
renovations/maintainance? Was a bit odd...

december 19
03-12-2008

the new exhibit it due to open on december 19, i can confirm that the seals will no longer be at sydney aquarium, they have been rehomed at sea world. the inhabitants of the new exhibit are still pretty hush hush for now

04-12-2008

not that hush, or maybe they are. a google search of dugongs/sydney aquarium brings up a tantalising hint...but the link has been removed............i think that the seals going to seaworld was a swap for something better

hush
05-12-2008

yeh i saw a few links were put up. i actually work for the company n we are all sworn to secrecy about the new exhibit but also very excited!

05-12-2008

Nothing really ever disappears from the internet:

The Rocks - New dugongs at Sydney Aquarium

05-12-2008

The Sydney Morning Herald: national, world, business, entertainment, sport and technology news from Australia's leading newspaper.

sydney morning herold has jumped on the lead too today

and the DA as well

http://www.shfa.nsw.gov.au/content/l...82F636AEFF.pdf

sounds exciting!