“St. Kitts’ Sea Lions & Seals are for educational purposes”…says Arthur Sharpe
By Stanford Conway
Editor-in-Chief-SKNVibes.com
BASSETERRE St. Kitts – LOCAL businessman Arthur Sharpe said the Sea Lions and Seals that recently arrived on St. Kitts would not be performing “circus tricks, but are here for educational purposes, especially for the school children, on the importance of their preservation and care as well as how they can be used in saving human lives”.
Sharpe declared that the project belongs to Marine World Limited, a company that involves both local and international investors. “Marine World Limited is a local company with local shareholders and international investors, and I am one of two of them. Some of them have previous experience in handling operations of this nature and I am just one of the two local faces that you will be seeing here every day.”
He also said that the South Friars Bay site is scheduled for opening to the general public in approximately two weeks’ time and children from all schools in the twin-island Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis would be invited to see and learn about the Sea Lions and Seals as well as to provide names for them.
Four Sea Lions and five Seals, including a 19-week-old pup, arrived in St. Kitts aboard a DC10 from Uruguay on Tuesday, April 8 and are housed within a sanctuary constructed by Arthur Sharpe at South Friars Bay on the South East Peninsula in St. Kitts.
In an exclusive interview with Mexican-born Hugo Perez, who trains the animals, SKNVibes learned that some information in a
previously published article is incorrect. He said there are four male Sea Lion and five Seals, including three females, one male and one pup at the site.
Perez explained that the Sea Lions are not of the Steller species, but the Otaria byronia or South American species and the Seals are of the Arctocephalus australis species, called the South American Fur Seal. Sea Lions, together with the Fur Seals, comprise the Otariidae family, collectively known as eared seals.
“There are two different species…the South American Sea Lions and the South American Fur Seals. The main difference is the size.
The Sea Lions can reach up to three and a half metres in size and weigh up to 900 kg. The name Fur Seal comes because the Seal Lions have only one kind of hair coming out of their skin while the Fur Seals have two…the first one is visible and the second one you cannot see because it is embedded underneath to protect them from the cold,” Perez said.
He further explain that male Sea Lions are three times as big as the females and they had tried to get one male and three females out of Uruguay, but because of restrictions imposed by the government of that country only males could have been had.
The trainer said the fishermen in South America have been blaming the Sea Lions for the destruction of their fish and also nets, “but the real fact is that the fishermen are eating all the fish”.
“Actually, it is the big boats that take away all of the fish in the ocean and the blame falls on these animals. Some governments, like in Chile, are authorising the killing of 5,000 of these animals because it’s a complex situation that would bring the government and about 7,000 fishermen into conflict,” he added.
Perez said many of the marine mammals are illegally hunted and the Asians are taking the genitals out of the males and selling them as aphrodisiac “to enhance sexual performance”, and they are paying a lot of money to the South American fishermen to get them. ~~Adz:Right~~
He explained that South American governments do not have many guardians to protect the animals and their main threats are the illegal hunts for sale to the Asian market and the killing by fishermen under the guise of destruction of their catches and nets.
Perez said the Sea Lion population in South America has been reduced to some 30,000 while the Fur Seal’s is over 300,000 and the latter is hunted and killed for the fur, leather and oil from its body.
Corroborating Sharpe’s explanation for the marine mammals’ presence in St. Kitts, Perez said, “One of our intentions of getting different species of these animals here is to try to educate people on their sufferings in their natural habitat.”
“The main purpose of the animals being here is for primary education. Education to ourselves, then we can share this education with the people of the Federation and also visitors and then with the institute’s order we can go world-wide with these animals.
“We are not saying that we going to save the species by bringing the animals here, because our intention is to make the people sensitive to their problems through natural interaction. If you don’t know what is a Sea Lion, if you have never seen one in your life, you just say ‘Sea Lions are being killed somewhere else in the world and you don’t care about that’. But after spending a day looking and developing a relationship with them, you will be concerned about their welfare and would not buy the products coming from them as well as to form delegations and advise the government to be more protective of them,” Perez said.
He also explained that the Sea Lions are more sociable than the Fur Seals, and because of their size a huge Sea Lion trusts himself so much that he could go close to the fishermen’s net, break it and take the fish away. But the smaller Fur Seals would never go close to a ship…“they will go far away in the Ocean, do a tremendous dive and try to get their squib down there. So they don’t get into trouble with the fishermen”.
The Mexican noted that in addition to animal husbandry training, the programme includes sea rescue operations, where the animals, on seeing someone in difficulty, would take a torpedo to the victim that would keep him afloat and to safety. Further, he said they would also be trained to swim around areas where people are diving, harnessed with oxygen tanks, to provide resupply of air.
Perez said the Sea Lions are about two years and a half years old, have the height of an average human and within the next two years they would increase to almost twice their present state. He also said efforts would be made by the company to garner a few females to increase the stock.
He said the animals eat about 18 pounds of special fish every day and it is supplied by a dealer in California, USA. He also explained that their average life span in captivity is approximately 25-35 years but much shorter in the wild.
With respect to the baby Seal, Perez declared that it is rapidly growing because it is nursed regularly by the very protective mother, unlike being in the wild where she feeds it for about three days on land and then go in search of food in the ocean and returns after nine days.
It was revealed by Arthur Sharpe; Chris Evelyn, the company’s Chief Operations Officer; Michael Martin, a local shareholder; and Perez that they are very anxious to educate the residents of St. Kitts and Nevis on the importance of these marine mammals and are counting the days for the commencement of visits to the site.
