Back To Basics
California Sea Lions; ⒸPieter Folkens Pier39; ⒸThe New York Times; Merlin ©The Marine Mammal Center California Sea Lio in La Jolla, CA; ⒸCC(SA_PD) TMMC rescue; ®BrianSimuro & TMMC CSLs at Pier39; ⒸPier39 CSLs and the Blue&Gold Fleet; ©Orange County Register Sea-Gull at Pier39; ©Reddit Guadalupe Fur Seal; ©The Marine Mammal Center Tim Vogel; ©Dr David Guggenheim at The OceanDoctordotcom Previous Next "I can't analyse the secret of success. In my style of working, I stick to the basics and make stories revolving around the hero."
S. S. Rajamouli; Indian film director and screenwriter "You have to be creative. It's the basics. You can't be Picasso unless you know how to draw a real face; then you can turn it upside down."
Diane EnglishAmerican screenwriter, producer and director Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
John DoeCEO "I don't think that the basics that kids need have changed in 10,000 years"
Fred Rogers (also known as Mister Rogers)American television host, author, producer, and Presbyterian minister. "I have to admit that I only read 'War and Peace' when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then."
Umberto EcoItalian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, cultural critic, political and social commentator, and novelist "Work and love; these are the basics. Without them there is neurosis."
Theodor Reik; German psychoanalyst, trained as one of Freud's first students in Vienna, Austria "Maths is like a ladder - if you miss the first few rungs, you can't jump up, so start with the basics."
Rachel RileyBritish television presenter "Emotions are the basics of any art form!"
Jean-Michel JarreFrench composer, performer and record producer "I sometimes get accused of being 'faux-naive,' but for me, it's really just about getting down to the basics of something."
Louis TherouxBritish-American documentary filmmaker, journalist, broadcaster, and author Previous Next
Back To The Basics
People love the natural world. We go to national parks, state parks, parks in the city, drive out to the grandparents’ farm for the day, or just take family walks around the block together on a brisk autumn evening.
And wildlife often overlaps with these forays. Like at San Francisco’s Pier39 on the Embarcadero. You know, K-dock, where the “world famous California Sea Lions" haul out.
I've been a volunteer-naturalist for the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito California for years. They rescue, rehabilitate, and release marine mammals along 600 miles of the Central and Northern California coast.
We taught Marine Mammalogy there every Saturday afternoon for 10 years. Whether the crowds came to see the sea lions or just chow down on some Bubba Gump’s Shrimp, hundreds of people from all over the world would pass by during an afternoon session. And everyone stopped.
Some, just to bark back at the noisy pinnipeds, laughing at themselves, then moving on. Others stayed for an hour, or more. Their interest levels and motivations differed, but wild animals hanging out in the middle of one of the world's most famous cities appeals to everyone.
It's unique…you can spot Moose strolling through downtown Anchorage, Elk gathered in Jackson Hole's town-square, and the Barbary Macaques are a fixture at the rock Of Gibraltar in Spain…but other than that, the spectacle of "critters among us" is not at all common.
But if the crowd spots an animal in distress, as we did sometimes, the mood changed quite quickly.
As Volunteer Naturalists for TMMC we had a direct line to our mostly volunteer Rescue-Capture team. That’s 1-800-289-SEAL . They have the training, Federal permits, and equipment to do the job. We explained the situation and out they came. On this day that included a tranquilizer dart gun with a cocktail of sedatives.
Because an extremely emaciated, entangled, and shark-bitten yearling had been evading capture for months.Having been reported up and down the coast by citizens at large for weeks. I started referring to him as Houdini.
But the crowd didn’t know that we’d been trying to catch him for weeks. All they knew was that “someone needs to get out there and do something right now!”
They were morphing into agitated-crowd state, something no one likes to see. Especially not me, a hundred pairs of eyes staring at me like I had something to do with the sea lion’s injuries.
Our rescue crew showed up in a boat and van with cages, nets, and water-crew, just as the crowd was growing in size. That unmistakable buzz of “something's up” getting near hostile territory.
Not always wise, if ever, a crowd is uncannily good at getting outraged at the same thing at the same time. The shared rowdy-discontent starts with low grumbling, leading to cries of alarm and dismay, followed by shouted advice once they figure out what is going on.
The Chief Veterinarian was leading the crew that day, mostly because of the delicacy in tranquilizing animals that can easily swim away and drown. He came over and asked me to control the growing, noisy crowd by keeping them informed about what was going on, a rescue-play-by-play as it were.
It was fun. But difficult. And a bit exhausting, too, since the entire crazy rescue took about 45 minutes. I dug deep and came up with my first assignment in "public-shouting". Without a microphone or bullhorn. High-school speech class helped here.
“Project,” Ms. MacGregor would say, “the people in the back row can’t hear you!”
I started with the basics;
I peppered my play-by-play narrative with reports on the activity happening right in front of us, which was sporadic but got pretty crazy real fast.
As predicted, the rescue started with the other 300 sea lions immediately jumping off the floats back into the cold water as the first rescue-diver approached their floating rafts. They swam around the basin, loudly complaining at us for disturbing their rest. But our divers had secretly surrounded the pier with our victim, swimming underwater then popping up at just the right moment to prevent him from escaping.
The entire rescue involved;
The crowd's mood had changed dramatically from when the rescuers had first arrived. They'd gone from an angry mob to an engaged crowd. Like home-town fans, they cheered for the effort like the San Francisco Giants were playing the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The first two shots bounced off the critter's emaciated, bony hips. Each miss was followed by a group sigh, sounding like an apparent home-run shot turned into a foul-ball by the wind. It was the last shot that got him, in what was left of his haunches. The crowd cheered like we'd just own the world Series with a walk-off Grand-Slam.
After frantically running back-and-forth, from one side of the pier to the other, looking for an escape route, the exhausted sea-lion took a desperate leap off its pier. It landed in a good friend’s rectangular net. The other divers quickly converged, helping lifting it out of the water and into a portable-cage for transport to our hospital across the bay.
The final capture only took one try, the crowd gasping audibly as my friend gave a huge kick of his fins to get his rectangular net under Houdini as it leaped off the pier into the water.
An experienced rescuer, he later claimed the move as his greatest catch ever!
All in all it was an eventful afternoon of interpreting the natural world. It was good to see how much empathy the diverse crowd shared for the suffering animal. And I was thrilled to see how just a little information could change a crowd dynamic from mad and ugly to happy and supportive.
That’s when you know you’ve piqued a few minds into a new way of thinking. Perhaps only for that afternoon, but when one’s overall goal is elevating our collective awareness of the natural-world we depend upon for life itself…
any movement toward “the light” is something worth trying to repeat!
I'd been reminded of another valuable lesson. Pay attention to the basics. They make a huge difference in everything we do.
The memory makes me think of the 3-R's, the world's short-list for any anyone's basic educational;
"…Readin-Writin'-and-'Rithmetic…"
I've since added a 4th R…recall…
because, without memory, there is no learning…we've only learned a lesson when recalled just when we it the most!