In celebration of Earth Day, Rapids defender Drew Moor chatted with Education Manager Colleen Shipley of the Downtown Aquarium of Denver to talk about the ocean, pollution, plastic and more.
Drew Moor: Tell us a bit about what you do.
Colleen Shipley: I am the education manager here at the Downtown Denver Aquarium. Part of my role is to do as much education as we can about the different animals and habitats we have here at the aquarium. I also help facilitate all the school field trips, virtual online classes, overnight trips for scouts and day programs.
Moor: Obviously this is an unprecedented and crazy time that we are all going through, hopefully everyone is staying safe and healthy and listening to the experts. How has the day-to-day changed? What is going on in this crazy time?
Shipley: Yeah it is crazy, absolutely. Our day-to-day has changed a lot. The aquarium is closed, as most places are in Denver right now. So, really, our focus is on making sure our animals are all safe, healthy, happy and doing well. Our day-to-day has focused from seeing and educating our guests to being able to help take care of the animals and then doing more virtual programs. We’ve been doing a lot more on our social medias, as well as getting a chance to book and do some more virtual classroom programs as all the schools have now moved to online teaching. So, it’s changed a lot, looking forward to getting back to somewhat business as usual sometime later. We don’t have any specific opening dates planned at this moment. We’re still working out those details on how to keep our guests and employees safe. Until then, just take care of the animals and having a good time learning this new virtual world we are all in.
Moor:Thats the reality of the situation we are in. Speaking of animals, I have a 3-year-old boy and a 2-year-old boy. They are not animals, they are humans, but I know they will be excited when the aquarium reopens. I have been to the Denver aquarium, but they have not yet, so how many animals are there, and which is your favorite?
Shipley: Thats the hardest question. There are about 14,000 individual animals that represent just over 700 different species. A lot of folks are surprised to find out that we don’t just have fish. Aquariums you’d expect just to have aquatic fish, but we have a lot of different animals because every animal is an aquatic animal. So, we represent the whole ecosystem throughout our display. We have reptiles, amphibians, mammals including our three sumatran tigers as well. So, a lot of surprises when you come to the aquarium to learn how we are all connected to water. My favorite seems to change everyday, I have way too many to chose from, but I almost always seem to settle on some kind of shark. There’s always something cool to learn about sharks in general. Today I think it might be something called the Swell Shark, because they’re Swell! They’re a fantastic shark, there’s a lot of new science that we are learning about them.
Moor: 14,000 animals! Thats about 13,900 more than I would’ve guessed are at an aquarium. In fact, I remember seeing the tigers, and they swim, too. Which a lot of people think cats don’t swim.
Shipley: Correct! Yeah, every cat is different. I'm sure a lot of people have cats as pets, and every cat has its own personality. Our three tigers are not as much of swimmers as some of their other friends as we’ve seen before. Sumatran tigers use water to cool off and even chase their prey into the water to ambush their prey. So, there’s a few big cats in the wild that are more water lovers than others, and Sumatran tigers are one of them
Moor: So, one of the main topics is ocean pollution, which is a lot worse than I think a lot of people realize. Certainly more than I realized, even within the last couple years. How does ocean pollution affect marine life, and how does it affect us on land as well?
Shipley: That is a great question, ocean pollution is actually about 80% land based sources. That is one of the things to keep in mind. Even us inland and here in Colorado, a lot of our pollution will eventually get into the ocean. It affects the animals in many different ways, it depends on the size of that pollution. Everything from entanglement, where birds, fish, marine mammals get entangled into discarded fishing lines, discarded fishing nets, plastic wrappers, six-pack rings. That is really the first level of how it can affect the animals. As that pollution breaks down into smaller pieces, it is ingested by other animals, then worked into the food chain. This is called bio-accumulation. That is one major way it affects us too, since the fishing industry is a major source of food for the world. We are now ingesting that as well now. So, there’s a lot of work being done to find out all of the different way it affects us.
Moor: Can you tell us how we can prevent plastic from getting into the ocean?
Shipley: Absolutely, there’s a lot of things you can do as an individual and also a lot of things you can do as a family to help make sure that we help the ocean and help keep pollution from getting into the ocean. One of the main things you can do is to choose to reuse. Make sure that instead of using disposable plastic water bottles, to always have a reusable and refillable water bottle and food containers. That is by far the easiest solution to help out. When you go shopping, to choose things that have less plastic packaging. I know it is a little difficult now because a lot of places aren’t allowing reusable bags, but, once life starts getting better, being able to bring your own bag is a great way to help the environment. Another great thing to do is recycle properly. Every town has some type of capabilities of recycling, check online what your municipality can recycle. Recycle as much as you can as well as your municipality has those options. Those are great changes that you and your family could make.
Moor: Well Colleen, thank you so much for all the information and for joining us here on Earth Day, which is a very important day for the aquarium. We can’t wait until the aquarium opens up again, I’m going to bring my boys and come by and visit you. Thank you so much for joining us!
