Staff and students from the Exotic Animal Training and Management Program will do a presentation for Island Packers Tour Company in the Channel Islands Harbor on March 20 at 8 am.
The group will bring Schmoo the California sea lion, one of the zoo’s oldest and most versatile animal presenters, about 8 am in order to show 85 middle schoolers on a Ventura County Schools field trip one of the animals they’ll see on their excursion “up close and personal.”
Schmoo is a female sea lion who came to the zoo when she was two years old and has lived at the zoo for 30 years. In that time, she has learned nearly 200 different behaviors, said instructor Gary Wilson who is a marine mammal specialist.
“She is considered quite elderly. Very few sea lions live to his age,” he said.
Wilson is bringing Schmoo because sea lions are a very big part of the marine ecosystem that surrounds the Channel Islands, he said.
The students will learn from Schmoo and her student trainers how sea lions live in the wild, how they swim and how they catch fish.
Cherryl Connally, co-owner of Island Packers-the charter boat company licensed to services to the Channel Islands National Park, said once the students are on the ocean they are likely see a group of sea lions resting on a buoy in the harbor.
Wilson said that wild sea lions living in our local oceans must adapt to our rather cold ocean temperatures by hauling themselves out of the water onto land, a buoy or whatever else they can find. If they can’t find a perch, they rollover on their back to let the sun warm them. If they get too warm, they submerge.
“They can even cause a mild warm-up by exposing just a flipper to the sun, “he said.
In addition to sea lions, the student will see pelicans, hundreds of common dolphins some gray whales swimming north with their newborns and mates, and if the trend noticed last week continues , dozens of humpback whales, Connelly said.
“Last Friday we counted 47 humpbacks on three excursions, which is an unusually high amount for so early in the season.”
http://www.islandpackers.com/
http://www.moorparkcollege.edu/zoo
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