A Coffee with Geoff Cummer, Assistant Supervisor of Marine Life at West Edmonton Mall!

Join us for a coffee and chat with Geoff Cummer, Assistant Supervisor of Marine Life at West Edmonton Mall!

Geoff shares his journey—from growing up in Barrhead to working in Los Angeles before returning to Edmonton to pursue his lifelong dream. Learn how he transitioned from the educational side of WEM Marine Life to animal care following COVID.

We dive into the details of WEM’s accredited facility, which adheres to the highest animal care standards. Discover fascinating facts about their residents: 17 South African penguins that often travel across Canada, and 3 California sea lions (Geoff clarifies the common misconception: they have ears, unlike seals!).

Geoff walks us through a typical day for marine trainers, detailing everything from breakfast prep and animal checks to cleaning and dinner feeds. Finally, we explore WEM’s vital partnership with SANCCOB Penguin Rescue in South Africa, which helps rehabilitate injured and abandoned baby penguins until they are fit to be released back into the wild.

Learn all about penguins, sea lions, and what it takes to run a world-class aquarium!

Home - SANCCOB

Let us know your thoughts in the comments and leave us a review!

Follow Coffee in the Park with Jennifer and Cam on our social medias

Instagram: https://instagram.com/coffeeintheparkwithjenandcam

Website: https://www.coffeeinthepark.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-in-the-park-podcast/

Transcript

0:01

Hi, I'm Geoff Cummer and you are listening to Coffee In The Park with Jennifer and Cam. They won. Can you believe it? I can't believe it. Cam what a game! Blue Jays are going to the World Series. I'm so excited. First time in what? 32 years? 34 years? I think so. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. So, hey, if you're listening to us somewhere where you don't know what we're talking about when we talk about Blue Jays, the Toronto Blue Jays, our Major League Baseball team here in Canada, is going to the World Series. And good for Toronto, because their other sports teams, well. Well, it doesn't matter. I know, the Leafs, well, nobody cares about the Leafs. We care about the Jays. This is really awesome. And there's something about sports, Cam, that bring people together. That's right. Sports does. And it's fantastic. And now we're going to have the US-Canadian rivalry. And if Canada wins, well, I won't get into it. But that's pretty awesome. So I'm excited. But hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Coffee In The Park with Jennifer and Cam. And we're pretty excited about this one, Jennifer. Cam, we are not at the Wall Coffee Roasters. We're not. We can't say we're at the Wall Coffee Roaster. We are at West Edmonton Mall. That's right. And we are down in the basement sort of of the mall here. I feel we went through tunnels, Cam. Yeah. And I think this is like the Penguin Room or something like that. It's kind of cool. I feel like I'm walking on water because there's water on the floor. And that's pretty cool. So, hey, we're going to get into it pretty quick here. But we want to remind everybody about our sponsors. First of all, Wing Snob. Wing Snob. Greatest wings you'll ever have. Fresh never frozen. 16 flavors and 4 rubs. Cam, what's your favorite wing? My favorite wing right now is their Hot Wing. They're really, I don't know why. The Hot AF? The Hot AF. I love that wing. That is an amazing wing. I really like it. And hey, listen, if you never had a Wing Snob wing, you need to get over to Wing Snob as soon as you can because they're the best wings you're ever going to have. And if you go on the night that the Edmonton Oilers are playing, you get their oiler pack, which is really cool. And you want to try that out! There's 10 locations in Edmonton and area. So check them out today at www.wingsnob.ca. That's right. Best wings you're ever going to have. Thanks Wing Snob. We love you guys. We're also brought to you by Mprint Printing. Amazing people. Mprint Sign and Print Solutions in Acheson are the preferred printer of Coffee In The Park with Jennifer and Cam. That's right. They do all our stuff and they'll do any of your stuff as well. If you're looking for brochures or business cards or pamphlets, they even wrap vehicles. They wrapped a helicopter once. We always say that. But it is so cool. When do we get to see this helicopter? Jan has pictures. Okay, I want to see the pictures. But Mprint does an amazing job, you guys. And if you're looking for a printer, doesn't matter where you are, these guys do some fantastic work. So you'll want to check them out. They're amazing. Their products are amazing. And you can find them at www.mprint.ca. That's right. So thanks, Wing Snob. Thanks, Mprint. We really appreciate it. I've been looking forward to this show forever. He has. To our listeners. Cam has been talking about this show for a very long time. So we are excited to be here. I brag to all my friends about this show because this is going to be the best, best, best show ever. Well, it is. For a lot of reasons. It'll be unique. It'll be unique. For sure. So hey, we have a great guest with us, Jennifer. Why don't we get right into it? So our guest today is Geoff from West Edmonton Mall. And Geoff, what is your official title here at the mall? Here at the mall, I am an Assistant Supervisor of Marine Life at West Edmonton Mall. OK. That's incredible. It is. OK. So we should tell everybody, because we have listeners all around the world, where we are, we're at West Edmonton Mall, which at one time was the largest mall in North America. Is that correct? Currently still is. Still is. Still is. OK. Even bigger than Mall of America. It's bigger than Mall of America. OK. I didn't know that. I didn't know that either. That's incredible. So just a little bit of history. I've lived in Edmonton for, well, I grew up here, was born here. We had a very good friend that worked for the people who built this mall, and I was here at the VIP opening night in phase one. Really? Yeah. Oh. Was that 1981? Well, yeah, a long time ago. Well, that's the four phases of the mall. So yeah, so it's pretty cool. So this is the biggest mall in North America. It currently still is the biggest mall in North America. That's really incredible. And so folks, if you've never been to West Edmonton Mall, you should Google it because it's pretty incredible. It is so impressive. They have, okay, so what do they all have here? They have... Well, there's the indoor ice palace. Indoor ice palace. A water park. A water park. There's a bowling alley. Yeah, that's right, bowling alley. There's an indoor racetrack. Yes, I always forget about the indoor racetrack. Oh, I forgot about the... Cam, we need to go. They now have Splatterverse, which is an indoor painting extravaganza where you throw paint at your friends. Oh, I'm going. Jennifer, we're going. There's a private karaoke room. Oh, okay, we might try that one too, yeah. Okay, and they have Galaxy... That's right, there's Galaxyland powered by Hasbro. Right, which has rides and roller coasters and all kinds of cool things on it, yeah. Yeah, and mini golf courses. Mini golf, I always forget about mini golf. This folks, this is all in a mall. All in a mall. And they have a hotel, the Fantasyland Hotel. The Fantasyland Hotel. Where the rooms are themed. Most of them. Yeah, so you can stay in... There's a Western theme, there's a Roman theme, there's a space theme. I think there's an igloo theme. There is. An igloo theme. Yes. Is it cold in that room? I'm sure you could turn the AC down a whole lot. So folks, we're not kidding. This is one mall that has all this stuff. It's really incredible. It really is. And it's pretty cool. And we are here today, specifically in the Marine part of the mall. Yep, the Aquarium, that's right. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about you. Sure. Where were you born? Where did you grow up? So I'm from rural Alberta. I was born in Barrhead. You guys familiar with Barrhead? Are you kidding me? Yeah, absolutely. I have relatives in Barrhead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll talk after. We'll see if we can connect with the relatives. So I was born in Barrhead, and basically lived there my entire life up until I graduated high school. My dad was a rodeo clown. My mom was an office worker. This is just too much. We'll talk after. This is incredible. There's so many synergies here. And then when I was 19, I moved to Los Angeles, and I lived there for seven years. And then in my mid-twenties, I moved back to Edmonton. I had never lived in Edmonton previous to that. I'd only been in Barrhead. But once I moved to Edmonton, I decided to finally pursue my lifelong dream of working with animals. And so I had been out of Canada for quite some time, and I did not really know how to apply for a job because I'd done the same thing for seven years as a volunteer in LA. So I literally Googled jobs with animals, Edmonton. And this position popped up. That's right. Wow. This was the first position you saw. It was the very first thing listed. So that's what you were doing in LA? No, when I was in LA, I was a volunteer working with a non-profit organization that worked with at-risk youth. So very different from my childhood dreams, but I decided to pursue that for a while and it was good. But then I got to the point where I was going to either move back to Canada or apply for a green card. Okay, but going from Barhead, Alberta to Los Angeles, California, talk about a culture shock. Yes, I had no concept for culture shock until I got there. I grew up 15 minutes outside of Barrhead at the end of the dead end road. So at night, there was no sound. It was just the wind and the occasional coyote. Then moving to Los Angeles, there was the hum of the freeway, police choppers, 24/7, constant. It was never quiet. No. It took me probably four months to get a good night's sleep. Really? Yes. But you stayed there seven years. I stayed there seven years. When I moved back, now I have to have three fans running in my room because I'm so used to noise in the background that I can't actually sleep when the room is quiet. Don't doubt. That's amazing. That's really cool, actually. So you grew up on a farm. Grew up on a farm. Animals. Had all kinds of animals. Yeah. Part of that was because, as I said, my dad was a rodeo clown. So he incorporated animals into some of the skits that he would do during rodeos. And my parents figured out pretty quick that I was really into animals. So any chance he got, he was buying ducks, pheasants, chickens. We had pigs, cows, turkeys. One point we had a llama. Llamas. I love llamas. So I was the designated animal boy growing up. Yeah. Caring for them when it came time to the early fall, and some of the animals were being butchered. I was in my room reading a book. Yes. I'm still pretty soft when it comes to that sort of thing. But I had a very early foundation in caring for animals, mucking out barns, making sure that everything was fed properly, and cared for, so transitioning to this many years later was pretty easy. Yeah. This is an incredible story already. I mean, we could go on about some of this stuff, but here's what amazes me is, so now you come back to Edmonton. Yeah. You grew up on a farm. Yeah. Cows, chickens, pigs. That's right. Goats. Any marine animals on the farm? I attempted to keep a fish tank once or twice. Yeah. How'd that go? Poorly. Not well, not well. Yeah. So all of a sudden, but here you are at the mall. Yes. And... Okay, but I have another question. I'm sorry. I have so many questions today. Yeah. So when you came back for your job search and you Googled animals at... Was it the zoo you were thinking about? I had no idea. I just didn't know. Obviously, I knew Edmonton had a zoo because we had visited several times. But I didn't even know... Like at the time, I didn't know that the zoo is city owned. So I couldn't find the zoo website initially, which is why I just Googled jobs with animals. And Marine Life at West Edmonton Mall was the first hit, and Edmonton Valley Zoo was the second hit. So I applied for both, and this is the one I got. So when you saw the job, did you think, I could do that? So interesting, here at Marine Life, there are two halves to Marine Life. There's the animal care half and the education half. So I applied for both, because I just wanted to work with animals, and I didn't really mind where they hired me. Part of what I did in Los Angeles was informal tutoring, mentoring, teaching. And so when they looked at my resume, which was pretty non-standard because I hadn't held a paying job since I was a teenager, they just saw teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching. So I was originally hired here on the education team. Yes, so I started by running birthday parties, running field trips, talking to kids all the way from 2 to 18 about animals. Yeah, I'm pretty good at talking. Sure. It was not difficult to find my stride. So I did that for four years and then Covid happened. Right. Yes. And but when I came back after Covid had calmed down and I continued to be here, I wanted something different. I had felt like I had done everything that I could do. I had learned all I could learn from being on the education team. So I asked to go on to animal care and I got the thumbs up. So I've been working with animals, specifically husbandry training for two and a half years now. So when you arrived, started your job here, that's right. What animals did they have? What were they? So we had sea lions then and now, penguins. We also have a whole bunch of fish and a whole bunch of reptiles, and a few frogs. Yeah, we have a few frogs. So how many penguins did you have? Oh gosh. Now our penguin colony has changed in numbers pretty consistently over the last ten years because it's a breeding colony. It's part of a program to help prevent penguins from going extinct. So when I started working here, we probably had about 17. We currently have 17. You have 17 penguins? 17 African penguins. Okay, Cam, I thought there was two. I thought, yeah, or even just one. Because I only ever just saw one. You have 17 penguins. There are 17 African penguins here. Are you? Okay, they're African penguins. Yeah, we do have to clarify this. Because everybody thinks penguins only come from the Antarctic. So some penguins do. All penguins come from the southern hemisphere. Okay. So if you're looking for penguins drinking Coca-Cola with a polar bear, that's never going to happen except for a commercial. That's right. But of the 18 different kinds of penguins, only five actually live consistently where it's cold. All the rest either migrate between cold and warm, or exclusively live where it's warm. That's right. Well, so I have to say, I'm not disappointed that the penguins come from Africa. But just so you know, we have listeners on every continent around the world except Antarctica and I was hoping that maybe- The penguin relatives would like- I know. But anyway, so- That's okay. So where in Africa? So if you're familiar with African geography, it's in the country of South Africa. Yeah. And if you're not familiar with African geography, it's just as far south in Africa as you can go. Right. So it's very appropriately named South Africa. Yeah, it's cold there. It's hot. Oh, it's hot there. It's hot there. So they're hot penguins. They're hot penguins, yes. Hot penguins. Yeah, the specific term we use at work is warm weather birds. Warm weather birds. Which a lot of birds are warm weather birds. You just should have a disclaimer. Anything I say on this podcast, don't listen to me. No, no. Because I'm not, yeah, so what do I know about it? But anyway, all right, so they're warm weather penguins. They're warm weather penguins, yes. In the summertime in South Africa, which they're getting to right now, close to our winter, opposite seasons, it can reach 40, 42 degrees Celsius during the day. Really? And in their winter time, at nighttime, it can occasionally drop to freezing. So they generally aren't ever going to be experiencing anything lower than zero. They have absolutely no tolerance or idea what snow is. They would have never seen that before. And they probably wouldn't survive, would they, if they hit snow? No, no. So when it gets down to those cold temperatures, thankfully it's for a very short amount of time, and they are able to keep themselves warm, but their bodies are really made for cooling down, whereas the big penguins you see from Antarctica are the opposite. They're good at warming up. This is amazing. I didn't know. Cam, I am learning so much today. This is so incredible. But then there are the penguins in Antarctic. That's right. Who started? Was it the penguins in Africa that moved to Antarctic, or was the penguins in Antarctica thought, I'm going to the Palm Springs and I'm moving to the South Africa? I think it all happened at the same time. That's great. I love this. This is so incredible. I didn't know anything. I don't know if they teach this in school and if they did, I missed it. Probably not. Yeah, probably not. So 17. So 17 penguins. 17 African penguins. Do they give birth here? Yes. They do. Yes. So in the 10 years I've been here, we've had five hatch. Of our, oh gosh, you're going to make me do math on the spot. So part of the breeding program makes transferring birds between facilities much easier. And one of the reasons we do that is our colony had a lot of relatives, big family tree, lots of cousins, nieces, nephews. And the goal of the breeding program is genetically healthy animals. So relatives having babies with each other, not so great. So we can transfer penguins out or bring penguins in. And so in June, we actually transferred four of our penguins out and they went to the Toronto Zoo. Come on. So they have four of our penguins there. Yeah. In mid Covid, we took four penguins in from the Vancouver Aquarium because they were experiencing negative effects of avian flu because their colony lived outside. So they needed to find an indoor space for them to live. So the population has fluctuated. Yep, they can move around. Our youngest is named Millie and she hatched here in 2019. Come on! And our oldest is named Sid and she just celebrated her 40th birthday. Forty! Come on! Yeah. I hope there was a special cake. Sid is pretty old, so we definitely gave her a couple of her favorite fish on the day, but she mostly just stands in place these days. Yeah. She's a sweet lady. So what is the average lifespan of a penguin? A wild African penguin? 15 years old. By the time they're 15 in the wild, that's it. They basically had their whole life experience. So what makes Sid special in terms of just the environment? I mean, Sid is special. Don't get me wrong. But the fact that Sid doesn't have to deal with sharks is a big thing. Good point. Sid has a veterinarian that can come and check on her with anything that she needs, plus a local team of veterinary technicians that can check in on her, and she also has an unlimited supply of food. So we buy massive amounts of food, keep it in freezer storage, and then each day we're thawing and preparing and feeding out that food. So each of our penguins is able to eat their fill every single day. Penguins are not like, at least my dog, who will overeat. Overeat? I was going to say, yes. So penguins, they'll stop when they're full. Even if you offer them their absolute favorite fish in the world, and they're full, they won't take it. Wow. Okay. I think the other reason that Sid's lived to be 40 is because she's loved. Very much so. You guys love her! I mean, Sid is not a cuddly penguin. Some of our penguins can be a little, they like some attention, some affection. Not so much with Sid. Sid's an independent lady. I love it. But she knows. She knows that she's taken care of. That's right. Okay. I come to the mall and get a pretzel. This is just blowing me away, all this stuff. I remember I got to see one day, and I think this was pre-Covid, because I don't know if you're still doing it, but I was walking through the mall one day, and one of your handlers had a penguin with them, and they were walking around the mall. So we used to do mall walks, we called them, with the penguins. But for the same reason Vancouver chose to transfer their penguins here, we discontinued walking them on the mall floor because we can't guarantee that someone from rural area on a farm isn't having something on their shoes. So once the avian influenza thing was breaking out, we just discontinued that. We still provide people with ways to see the penguins, and we bring the penguins out of their house all the time so that they get new sights and sounds. Do you take the penguins out anymore to schools or anything? Absolutely. Yes, we still do outreach programs, it's quite popular. So in this past school year, so the 2023, 2024 school year, that's right, we had pretty record numbers of outreaches being booked. That's incredible. Not doing so many right now, obviously, but we're hoping that come January, which is really when most schools book their field trips, is January to June, that we'll have lots of field trips. Man. Okay, so penguins, but there's a lot more. Yeah, there is. So tell us what else is here. So we also have sea lions. Sea lions. That's right, sea lions. Like the real sea lions. California sea lions. Really? Now, don't let the name fool you. California sea lions do live in California. Yes. But they also live south down towards Mexico, and you can find them up into Canada as well, along BC's coast. Yes. Once you get about halfway up the BC coast, you don't see California sea lions anymore, but you will find the largest kind of sea lion called stellar sea lions. We don't house those here. They are very big. I've seen them. I used to live in Sacramento, California. Okay. And we would go to San Francisco. Yep. And the docks would be covered. Covered. Absolutely. With sea lions. Yes. And they were big. Yes. Are those the same as yours? Yes. California sea lions. They were huge. Yeah. And they barked and you didn't go near them. They're very noisy. Yeah. And they got kind of aggressive. Wild sea lions, absolutely. Please don't approach them. And so how many do you have here? So currently we house three. Three. So we have our male Pablo, our female Quinty, and then our other male, but we still call him baby because he's just a little guy. His name is Wembley, and Wembley currently looks like his mom, not his dad, because they don't start looking like males until they're about seven or eight years old. So they're kind of slender and tiny in stature until they hit a big growth spurt, and then suddenly they bulk out and gain double their weight and become big boys. I'm just going to say I'm kind of not very good at this. I just thought they all looked alike, but obviously, that's not true. Males are two to three times bigger than the females. So if you're ever looking at a beach and you're seeing a lot that look about the same size, probably females, because females hang out in big groups. Typically, each male is going to claim a portion of the beach, and then any females that live on the beach kind of become his harem, and then those are his... Those are his... That lucky little seal. I gotta say, hey, wow, incredible. Okay, so you have three of them here. That's right. What's the average lifespan? So, wild California sea lions typically live to be about 20, if they're lucky, 25. Our oldest Pablo is going to be turning 30 in June, which is pretty exceptional. We previously housed two others, two elderly females. Well, they weren't elderly when I started, but they became elderly. Their names were Kelpie and Clara. They've both since passed. That's just what happens when you get really old. Sure. So, it's a pretty good testament, again, just like our penguins get pretty old, our sea lions are living to be quite old. Again because you are taking such good care of them. Wild sea lions don't live long enough to develop cataracts. Our sea lions are developing cataracts. So, do you know why that is? Just age. Same reason people get cataracts. Senior citizen home for penguins and seals. And reptiles. We have a lot of old reptiles, too. Do we have reptiles here? Yes, we do. Okay, we'll get to that in a sec. So, the seals, you guys do, you train them. Sea lions. Sea lions, not seals. That's okay. And you know what? I'm going to jump on that. That's a really good chance. So, seals and sea lions are different animals. They look fairly similar. They're different. But sea lions have big front flippers and little ears that you can see. Seals have tiny front flippers. So, if you're looking at something on the beach and you're like, what is it, seal or sea lion? If it looks like it's galloping, like all four limbs are on the ground moving, that's a sea lion. If it's kind of doing the belly roll like a big worm, that's a seal. Okay. And if they're in the water and they just have their little head poking out, look for ears. If you can see little ears, those are sea lions. Nothing you see, that's a seal. In case you're on the beach and one approaches. Well, it is. You don't want to offend it and call it a sea lion. You do not. Okay, so those are amazing. And you guys do an amazing job with them here. You do public demonstrations. We do, yep. So tell us about that. Like, how long does it take to train one? How long does it... Sure, so we can use Wembley as a good example because Wembley was born here and we started working with Wembley basically as soon as he was born. Now, I wasn't on the sea lion team at that point in time, so I wasn't involved in primary care for him, but there are still a number of girls working here who were, so obviously he's a baby. He's with mom, he's drinking milk, but they already wanted him to start getting used to people being around. He was going to be in an environment with people, so better to get him used to us early on. And pretty quickly he showed that developmentally he was gonna be moving fast. A lot of sea lions will wait a few months to jump in the water. At one week old. Wembley said, watch me swim, and gave everyone a heart attack as he jumped into the pool. That's like a six month old baby walking. That's unbelievable. Of course, when we train our sea lions, we use fish, right? We want to reinforce them or give them a treat to show them that they did a good job. And so it's pretty easy to train a sea lion for that reason, because Pablo eats almost 30 pounds of fish a day. He has lots of opportunities to throw fish at his face and tell him he's doing a good job. When Wembley was a baby, we can't, yeah, 30 pounds of fish. Come on, where do you guys get your fish? So we order it from a seafood company that is located in Canada. And that seafood company sustainably sources the fish. That means they're leaving enough fish behind in the ocean so that those fish populations can reproduce. What kind of fish is it? Is it like a herring or? Herring is one of them. And the other is called capelin. Capelin, yeah, I've heard of capelin. Capelin comes from Canada's Maritime Coast. So on to Newfoundland. Okay, so you're training them. We're training them. So Wembley, when he was little, he started learning pretty early. But of course, we couldn't feed him fish because he's a baby. And babies don't eat fish. And we can't like squirt a bottle of milk at his face, because that's not going to make sense. So they just had to watch and figure out what is the animal like. Pretty quickly they figured out he likes ice cubes. So we have a lot of ice in the facility because we've got to keep all the fish chilled. So rather than having a pouch with ice at the bottom and fish on top, they would just fill the whole pouch with ice. And every time he did something they liked, they'd just throw an ice cube at him. And he loved it. And he loved it. Absolutely. One day they were watching him on the cameras, because of course they were not back there all the time. We let them have a lone time and they were watching him. And there was a hose that had a little drip and he laid on his back underneath the hose with his mouth open and he let the water drip in his mouth. So they went out and bought a water gun. And every time he did something they liked, they just squirted him with the water gun. He loves it. He still loves it. Totally opposite to a dog. When a dog does something, you squirt him and he hates it. Wembley loves it. They're like big water dogs. Yeah. That's incredible. So we started training him young because we have a veterinary team and most of the training is rooted in veterinary care. How can we make it as painless and easy as possible for a vet to be able to look at them? Yes. So let's talk about that for a sec. Absolutely. Because there are people that were saying, you know, the people who don't like animals in captivity. Sure. They get a little... Worked up. Worked up. And we want everyone to know, because I believe this and already from what you've told us today, these animals are incredibly well taken care of. Like, talk to us about that. Like, if people are worried about these animals in captivity, tell us why this is... So, two thoughts come to mind. In house, we have an on-call veterinarian, and we have four veterinary health technicians. So, they are the ones doing the on-the-ground work. Every time a staff member reports, this animal did something funny with its head this morning, they're there. They're there to go look at it, make sure everything's fine. If anything, does seem a little out of the norm, we just email the veterinarian. He does come on-site once a month, but we can't have him here all the time, because he doesn't live in province, because there's not a lot of Alberta veterinarians that know about... Exactly. Lots of bovine veterinarians, but not a lot of... Now, that's not to say that we don't, in an emergency situation, there are exotic veterinarians that we can call upon, but for the marine animal expertise, we do have a veterinarian on call from BC that can come in. And so, literally anything. Our sea lion trainers are really good at noticing little scratches, as small as 2 millimeters on our sea lions. They have them lay down every day, and they literally run their hands over their whole body. They're looking for anything. Anything that wasn't there yesterday. Same with the penguins. I work with the sea lions and the penguins, but I do a lot with the penguins. Every day we're going in there, we're looking at them. Oh, that one's eye looks a little bit more red than it did yesterday. Let's report that. So, it's ongoing veterinary care preventative, making sure if there's anything that looks, oh, that could get bad, we're doing things right away. Of course, it's reactive. Anytime something happens, you know, an animal falls from a tree branch that they're holding on to, or they crawl under a rock and they scratch themselves or something, we can deal with that as well. One of the things you said earlier that struck me, I think we were talking about Wembley, you said he had some alone time. Yes. That's incredible. They get their alone time. They're not always with you guys. They're not always with the others. They get some alone time, which I think is important, right? Each animal is different. Our snakes get alone time all the time because they are solitary animals. Our penguins, we don't ever really give them alone time because in the wild, socially, they never seek that out. They are very colony-based animals. Sea lions, sure, if they want to play, they've got a big group, but if they want some alone time, they can go on a swim in the ocean. So that's my point. My point is, is they're not just always cloistered together. Exactly. They have the freedom, the ability. And I watched Happy Feet. I know the penguins like to be together. They are very social creatures. Yes. Wow. How long does it take to fully train a sea lion? I mean, Pablo is almost 30 years old and he's still learning. So to learn the basic medical husbandry behaviors, so we teach them to follow our finger with their eye. If we tap on their nose, they'll blow air at us so we can smell their breath. It needs to smell fishy. If it smells sour, there's something wrong. We teach them, we say cheese and they open their mouth and we brush their teeth. We can stick our fingers in and around their ears. So to learn those things, Wembley turned three in July and he knows how to do all those things. He's a smart boy! So it doesn't take super long to learn the basics. But now Wembley's learning how to jump out of the air and spiral while he jumps. Pablo most recently has learned to lift his body up out of the water and clap his flippers together to make a wave of water that can splash people. So these are new things that they're learning. Quinty just learned something called a speed swim where she swims with her head out of the water at a really high speed. So she creates a wake like a boat. And she does it really fast back and forth. So part of their health isn't just physical, it's also mental. So engaging them mentally, keeping them cognitively on their toes is also really important for them. That's also why we do training with the penguins. We teach them to do medical behaviors, we teach them to interact with guests, because it's all really good for their brains. So I think this is really important for people to know, because I think the misconception is they just sort of sit there all day and they're not being stimulated in any way like they are in the wild. I mean, sometimes Pablo does sit there all day. But that's his choice. And so do some of us. But I think that's really important for people to know that you are, you work with these amazing, amazing creatures and teach them these things and stimulate them. It's incredible. So I have, again, so many questions. But walk us through a day in a life of what you would do here at the mall. So I'll walk you through a full 12 hour day. We only work eight hour shifts, but I'll walk you through a full 12 hour day.

So if I was working a full day from 6: 32:05

30 a.m.

to 6: 32:08

30 p.m., the first thing I would do, which is what I did today, is get to the mall and keep my hands on frozen fish for about two hours. So we call it food prep. And during two hours of our morning, is spent sorting, measuring out, and preparing all the fish, as well as all the vegetables, because we do have a bunch of animals that eat veggies, all reptiles. So that is where the day begins. About an hour into that is when our next shift starts. And those are what we call our opening shifts. So they're going to be coming in, and each animal has now had 12 hours of sleep, 12 hours of not being attended to by a person. So those early staff are coming in, and they're looking over every single animal in the facility, whether it's a fish, or a penguin, or a snake, or a lizard, or a reptile. Every single animal, every single day is getting looked at. Within reason being picked up, right? If our frog is hiding in the corner, and we're not picking up Pablo. So he participates in his own way. Pablo is a little big. Yeah. So the reptile handlers are in, they're checking them, they're giving them their morning food, they're cleaning out any waste that has been left overnight. They're making sure that the humidity is correct, the temperatures are correct, make sure all the timers that the lights are on are spun properly. Then our sea lion team gets in at about eight, and they start their day by going upstairs, waking the sea lions up. As Pablo gets older, his morning time gets later and later. So once upon a time... Is he grouchy when he gets up? Yeah. He's just sleepy. He's just a sleepy guy. Used to be that by eight o'clock, he was ready to go. Now some mornings by like ten o'clock, he's like, now I'm interested. I love it. This is great. So our sea lion area gets pressure washed every single day, so they move the sea lions around from place to place, and then wherever they're not, they're pressure washing, they're feeding the fish in between. At some point in there, we've also done our morning penguin feed, so we've prepared our food. We've gone in, we've fed the penguins. The middle part of the day is cleaning. It's just a lot of cleaning. All of the animals that need to have their houses cleaned, the penguins get cleaned every day. All of the animals that have midday cleans, a lot of water changes for fish. So there's a lot of cleaning that happens in the middle of the day. The middle of the day is when we're open to the general public. We also have staff doing animal presentations. We have staff attending to our touch pools, making sure that when guests are touching the sharks or touching the sea stars, they're doing so in a respectful manner. And then the end of the day is closing. It's just everything we did in the morning in reverse. So checking over the animals again, but now taking any food they didn't eat out of their exhibit, taking any waste we find out, making sure their house is arranged nicely. There's a PM feed for the penguins, so giving them their supper, making sure that they're all kind of tucked in for the night, making sure we didn't forget any toys in the exhibit. And same thing for the sea lions. The sea lion, sea lion day is a little different because they're big animals, they eat big amounts of food, so they have training ongoing all day long. And we have our public show that we do at two o'clock, various days of the week. But then at the end of the day, same thing, they make sure all the food's been fed out, they kind of tuck them in for the night. As I was mentioning earlier with being social, we have to plan the social scenario. So we have areas that we can keep them separate from each other, or we can open the gates and let them be together. So if Pablo was alone one day, the next day we'll plan for Pablo to hang out with Wembley. But now that they've been together, that means Quinty had alone time. So the next day we're gonna plan for Quinty and Pablo to be together overnight, and Wembley will have the night to himself. So it's a lot of moving parts. This is really something. I don't think anybody would ever understand or realize. Cam, this is why we're doing this podcast. I want people to know this. This is incredible. It's a different kind of day. I haven't been here for how long, and I didn't know any of this. This is incredible. And it makes me very confident that you are taking very good care of all these animals. So the other thing I was going to say earlier about assuring people about the care the animals are receiving, we have all the veterinary care and everything I just mentioned about looking the animals over. We're also an accredited facility. So zoos and aquariums all around the world can all volunteer to be accredited. Depending where you are in the world, there's different accrediting bodies that you can sign up to be audited by. But basically, whatever accrediting body you go with, here at Marine Life, we use CAZA, Canada's Accredited Zoos and Aquariums. So they basically give us their guidebook. They say, here are all the regulations we want you to follow. You house this animal, here's how many of them can live together based on how much space, here's the kind of food they need to eat. You house this kind of animal, here's all the guidelines for that. It's also, you need to be talking about these conservation projects when you do education. You need to make sure that you have this many care staff on hand. You need to make sure that if a fish touches the floor, no five second rule for the animals, it just goes in the garbage and we have a different fish. So CAZA is the accrediting body within Canada. The AZA is the American one. The WAZA is a global one. Japan has their own, Europe has their own. And so you can go on to an accrediting body's website to see the kinds of standards that they require of their participating animal care facilities. And then when you go to most animal care facilities websites, usually at the bottom where you have the about us section, they'll display all the logos of all the accrediting bodies that they are accredited by. So that is something else that we are doing is constantly making sure we're keeping up those standards because CAZA can choose to come and do an inspection anytime they want. They have planned audits that we know are coming where they're going to go through everything with a fine-tooth comb. But then there's also just pop-in inspections. And then we also are licensed by Fish and Wildlife. So they'll come in each year as well just to make sure. Okay, so a couple of things. What other, tell us about all the other animals you have. So we house several different kinds of snakes. We have two different kinds of frogs. We've got a bunch of different lizards. And then a whole bunch of different fish. Okay. Right now all of our fish are saltwater fish. We don't have any freshwater fish at the moment. And we have little tiny blue damsel fish all the way up to nurse sharks, which are about 10 feet long. Like shark sharks. Shark sharks. And don't forget the sea turtles. We've got sea turtles as well. Sea turtles? Yes. So we have two sea turtles. They're one of the other big dynamic animals. They're both males. Their names are Blue, like the color, and Donatello, like the ninja turtle. Uh, Donatello? Donatello's lived here just about as long as Marine Life's been opened. Really? Yeah, so he's in his 40s, but we don't know his exact age because he did come to us as a rescue. Oh, okay. So he was actually confiscated by Border Security back in the 80s. Really? Someone was smuggling him into Canada and he was found in the trunk of their car. Really? Oh my goodness. So he is not as big. That's not the one from Genics. Yeah, we had a turtle, I don't think that's him. But turtles, aren't turtles known to live long, very long. They can live very long. So green sea turtles, which is what our turtles are, easily 100 years old. They can live. They'll outlive us. Probably. Yeah, probably. Our snapping turtle, Juan, he's lived here for 25 years. He's also a rescue. Someone found Juan. Juan. Juan. Juan. Juan. Juan. Yeah, like Juan Carlos. Juan Carlos. He's lived here 25 years. He has ongoing medical issues because he was a rescue as well. But they can live to be over 100. My favorite fun fact about snapping turtles, which I'm going to share, is that the average number of snapping turtles that are born any given year is zero. And the average number of snapping turtles that die on any given year is zero. What? Because their birth rate is so low that it takes about 1,030 laid eggs to produce one snapping turtle that survives. So more than 1,000 out of 1,030 eggs doesn't make it to adulthood. But they live so long that the ones that do survive don't die very often. Don't die. So the average number of snapping turtles born and die each year is zero. Is zero. Which is just, so that'd be yeah, birth rate of zero. Nature's crazy. No, that's a great trivial pursuit fact right there. Exactly. Keep that in your pocket. I know. So are they considered then endangered? Endangered? They are vulnerable, but they're not currently endangered. So when they look at animals, animals can be what's called least concern. So they're doing great. Endangered means, okay, we've reached a situation where without major intervention, their population is going to continue to decline. Vulnerable means we've recognized that there are factors that could push them one way or the other. So more care needs to be given. Where do they primarily come from? So snapping turtles do live in Canada, but not in Alberta. Unfortunately, Alberta is a turtle dead zone. We have no native turtles in Alberta. We won't get into that. BC has turtles, Saskatchewan and East has turtles, but Alberta, no native turtles. No native turtles. We do house some turtles in ponds, but most of those are released formerly as pets. But in Manitoba and going east and then down to the United States, you can find both snapping turtles, common and alligator snapping turtles. I'm telling you, seriously, this is unbelievable. This is blowing my mind. Right here in Edmonton, in a mall, in a mall, nonetheless, in a mall. I know. Of all places. It's so cool. And I just think, I don't know, if people have never seen it. I mean, we're running out of time, but we could talk about this forever, because this is fascinating. So yeah, I mean, if you've never been here, you need to come here to West Edmonton Mall. You need to check this out. Because for a lot of, you know, at first, I got to be honest, I walked into this podcast, I thought this is going to be cool talking about it. Now, after hearing all of this, this is more than just cool. This is amazing, like this is absolutely amazing. Thank you. That here in Edmonton, and again, it's Edmonton. Landlocked Edmonton. Landlocked, yeah, that's right. That's right, we don't have oceans around us anywhere. We do not! And then to hear how you take care of these amazing animals does my heart so good. Thank you. Because, you know, I think it's just, it gets, and especially kids, they get to see it. Like, they get to see it first time. They do. Yeah, which I think is really important. We love running programs for kids. We have so many field trips come through. So many kids who, like you said, in Edmonton, when are you ever going to see a sea turtle? Exactly. And being able to go up behind the scenes, throw food in the water, watch the sea turtles eat, is an experience. I mean, we've hired staff here that came on field trips when they were little. Really? Because it's so fascinated by it all. We've been around long enough for that to be the case, and yeah, they say that field trip I came on, that time my mom bought me that program for Christmas, it changed my life, and they eventually got a job here. So I love that. Very cool. So folks, come to the mall. Check it out online so you know when the different shows and things are happening. Yeah, we'll always post our open hours. We'll post what presentations are happening during the day. There's also a Facebook page you can follow if you're still on Facebook, where we'll post our presentation schedule for the day. Our social media manager is constantly posting fun facts about the animals. For the month of October, she's posting pictures of x-rays of the animals. You have to guess what part of what animal you're looking at based on a close up. Cool. And then the next day she'll post the full reveal. Guess I know what you're following as soon we get out of here. Where's Cam? In his office looking at x-rays. That's pretty cool. It also gives prices for the different shows. Prices for the shows. We also have private encounters. So if you want to come meet the penguins. We did that actually for my son's birthday. Oh, did you? He loved it. It was amazing. So if you want prices for any of that, you can always check out the website and then you can always call our education office if you have specific questions. I can't believe we're at the end because this has just been so fascinating. I have a feeling we're going to talk long after. I think so. Yeah. Over a few things. Over a few things. But we have one final question we ask all of our guests. What is the best piece of advice you've been given either personally or professionally that you carry with you to this day? I would probably say, and it's very pertinent when you're training animals, that mistakes don't define you. You are not your mistakes. Mistakes are just something that happened. Learn from them and keep moving on. Great advice. Fantastic advice. Folks, I'm telling you, this is a good one. Amazing. I love it! He's at a loss for words. I am at a loss for words. And it's Cam this is rare. We want to remind everybody about Wing Snob. Thanks, Wing Snob, because without you, we wouldn't be able to be here doing this. Wing Snob, 10 locations, 16 flavors, 4 rubs, fresh, never frozen. Check one of them out, and Mprint. Amazing people, amazing printers, amazing jobs. And this is absolutely incredible, Jennifer. I love it. So listen, everybody. You need to tell everybody about this podcast. So you need to tell your friends, your neighbors, the people you work with, your enemies. If you don't have any friends, make a friend so you can tell them about this podcast, because it's pretty incredible. And yeah, wherever you get your podcasts or at... www.coffeeinthepark.com Yeah, thanks. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Great. See everybody. See you next time.