Virginia Edmonds was a former caretaker at the Lowry Park Zoo and came to South Florida Museum shortly after Snooty's death.
BRADENTON — The new director of South Florida Museum's Parker Aquarium, the tank that once held Snooty, the world's oldest-known manatee, wants to teach visitors what affects manatees in the wild and the things they can do to protect them.
Virginia Edmonds, formerly an animal care manager at Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, said education will help save manatee lives.
"I know there are so many people out there that love manatees and are devoted to manatees and would love to do that (help them) — I do it for them too," Edmonds said. "I save manatees for them and all those people that care for manatees. It’s quite a gift to be a part of it."
Edmonds is the museum's first new staff member since the death of Snooty on July 23, 2017, a day after his record-setting 69th birthday.
The Herald-Tribune published photographs from a media event the day before Snooty’s July 22 birthday celebration, which clearly show the panel to the chamber where he later drowned was askew and appears to be possibly hanging from a single bolt.
Museum leaders later said Snooty's death was preventable and that a series of communication failures cost Manatee County its beloved mascot.
Edmonds has spent 27 years working with animals, both in the aviary and the manatee program at Lowry Park Zoo. She has 29 years of overall animal care experience, and attended the University of South Florida. She has an associate's degree from Hillsborough Community College.
Her background is working with hoof-stock (barnyard) animals, big and small carnivores, reptiles, birds and manatees.
Edmonds was raised in New York, but has spent more than 30 years in Florida. She helped build the manatee rehab program at Lowry Park Zoo.
"We were looking for somebody who could bring education, bring knowledge, and build a working relationship across department lines to be able to really bring manatees and what we do for living things into focus," South Florida Museum CEO Brynne Anne Besio said. "Someone who can manage people as well as the manatee program."
Manatee experience was necessary, but Besio said Edmond's was hired for her team-building ability.
"The other piece is that she is already embedded in the Manatee Rescue & Rehabilitation Partnership program," Besio said. "That is a pretty small community. We may have to work with many different facilities and they all have to work together — to have someone that is already involved, like Virginia is, it means nobody has to start at the beginning. They can jump in and start immediately."
Edmonds replaces Snooty’s primary caretaker Marilyn Margold, formerly the director of living collections. Schubick confirmed that Margold no longer works at the South Florida Museum, but she would not comment on whether her departure was related to Snooty’s death.
Besio said that after the death she did not officially offer her resignation to the Board of Trustees, but did offer to cooperate fully with the Board in taking the next steps. That included offering her resignation as a possibility within those next steps, if the Board felt that was in the best interest of the museum.
"The Board did not feel that was appropriate and did not ask for her resignation, and therefore she did not offer it," Schubick said.
Experienced at rehab
Edmonds isn't your typical museum director. She is less formal, dressed to work and willing to go into the field to help manatees that could end up recovering in the Parker Aquarium's Stage 2 rehab center, which has rehabbed 34 manatees in 25 years.
"Doing manatee rehab well is saving manatee lives. That’s what we do," Edmonds said. "They come in sick, injured and orphaned. I want whoever does it to do it the best they possibly can, because in the end you’re going to save a manatee life hopefully."
Besio and Edmonds both said they want the program to grow, and updates beginning in February will allow them to expand their role in manatee care. They tank is currently able to hold three adult manatees or three to four juvenile manatees. Its overall limit is capped by its filtration system.
Edmonds said she wants the museum to be prepared to help in the event of a catastrophic manatee incident, such as red tide and cold stress, which in years past has killed over 300 manatees in a single season.
Red tide can cause seizures and paralysis in manatees and requires 24 to 48 hours of constant care. The recovery period is uncomfortable and painful for the sea cows, said Edmonds, who added that they are unable to raise their heads above water to breathe.
"We could be a bigger part of that, help them get a quick turnaround and hopefully get them back out to the wild," the director said. "I just want to help the manatees."
Over the next month, the museum is planning to upgrade its aquarium facility.
Rehab manatee Gale is scheduled to be released, while a juvenile manatee, Baca, is being moved to SeaWorld during the renovations. He, or another rehab manatee, will return after the project is completed.
The improvements include: reconditioning and resealing the tank viewing windows, resurfacing and repainting the interior walls and shelf, upkeep of the wooden docks, adding a walk-in food storage cooler to hold wild foods (water hyacinth and hydrilla), a new ozone system for water quality and a medical pool door.
A manatee hoist and lift are in development and will be installed later.
Some of the upgrades are being made with a $250,000 grant from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The grant was approved by the Florida legislature in 2016 and the South Florida Museum has four years to work with FWC to use the funds.
The museum is also breaking ground on a new education complex that will add four new classrooms and a new indoor/outdoor early learning exhibition called the "Mosaic Backyard Universe." The education center will replace the parking area — the city is building a parking garage nearby.
Besio called the improvements a "reboot" for the museum in the post-Snooty era.
"In the aquarium, certainly our focus is the manatee rehab program," Besio said. "Making it the most stellar Stage 2 facilities we can have and growing it to more delicate care that Virginia (Edmonds) can bring to us. As far as the facility, we are certainly a general type of museum — with an all-science focus, a planetarium and natural history museum."