Sea Lions arrive in St. Kitts!
A boost to Tourism Sector
By Stanford Conway
Editor-in-Chief-SKNVibes.com
FRIARS BAY, St. Kitts – A positive change in the landscape of South Friars Bay in the South East Peninsula is currently taking place and, from all indicators, it will be a fillip to the tourism sector.
A visit by SKNVibes to South Friars Bay yesterday [Wednesday] not only produced raised eyebrows on seeing the ongoing construction of a state-of-the-art restaurant, but also eight Sea Lions, including a pup, that arrived in St. Kitts by air Tuesday afternoon.
The area in which the Sea Lions are penned and allowed to swim was restricted to visitors because of the long hours of travel they endured before their arrival in the Federation. SKNVibes was however told that the restriction would soon be lifted and the public would be able to view the marine mammals from close-up.
Speaking with Jim Perry from Kentucky, USA this media house learned that the project is owned by Kittitian businessman Arthur Sharpe.
Perry said he has been working with Sharpe for some 18 months and was tasked with finding an appropriate mode of transportation to get the Sea Lions moved out of Uruguay to St. Kitts. ~~Adz:Right~~
“I have been working with Mr. Sharpe for about a year and a half and he had some difficulty in securing a safe plane that could bring the Sea Lions directly from Uruguay to here. But as we found out in the five months of what other people were attempting to do, I was able to secure a DC10 in Brazil that came in to Uruguay and dropped the Sea Lions off in St. Kitts within 13 hours and continued on its way to the United States.”
Perry said he had been transporting horses for over two decades and this is the first time he was involved in moving Sea Lions from one country to another. He explained that a team of veterinarians from Sea World and Georgia Marine Lines, whose experience in animal care coupled with his experience in logistics of moving freights internationally, made the trip a very successful one.
He said the school of Sea Lions includes a four-month-old pup which is “the first time in 25 years that one has been bred in captivity and we were able to move it from Uruguay to here, which is a wonderful and beautiful facility to raise him in”.
Perry informed that the facility is being developed by Marine World Limited and the mammals would be trained by Mexican-born Hugo Perez.
The nine marine mammals are of two species – the South American Sea Lion [Otaria byronia] and the South American Fur Seal [Arctocephalus australis] and can be found throughout the South American coastal region.
Together, the Sea Lion and Fur Seal comprise the Otariidae family, collectively known as eared seals.
Male Sea Lions measure on average 260 centimetres and weigh around 300 kg, while females are usually about 200 centimetres and weigh 150kg, and pups measure around 80 centimetres and weigh from 10 to 15 kg.
The South American Sea Lion has a dark brown dorsal side [upper side of the body] and a yellowish brown ventral [lower side or abdominal plane of the body]. The males have lighter coloured manes and the females have none, but have a lighter coloured fur in the head and neck area.
Pups are born with a black coat and after a few months they develop a gray coat which at the age of one year is reddish brown.
The South American Fur Seal has a gray-black coat; females and sub-adult males have lighter colouring on the chest. This species varies in size regionally. For example, adult males in Uruguay are about 1.5 times larger than adult males in Peru.
Conversely, adult females in Uruguay are about three-quarters the size of adult females in Peru. On average, adult males measure up to two metres long and weigh 150-200kg, while adult females measure up to 1.5 metres long and weigh 30-60 kg.
Eared seals are able to control their hind flippers independently, allowing them to be particularly agile on land and, unlike the true seals, they swim using their fore-flippers.
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