Artivist Series - Sophie Guarasci
marine mammal vet tech
Sophie Guarasci worked in the world of fashion and finance before becoming a licensed veterinary tech. She works at the Marine Mammal Center, the nation’s foremost marine mammal hospital located just north of San Francisco. Sophie oversees the clinical and surgical treatment and husbandry of seals, sea lions, and sea otters. It’s her dream job, even though there are times she has to make difficult decisions about the treatment of severely ill animals. Every time the Center saves an animal and is able to release it back to the ocean, Sophie feels hope that they are making a difference.
Video conversation with Sophie … click here
What Sophie talks about …
Sophie discusses her work with stray dogs in La Paz, Mexico before moving to San Francisco with four of the dogs she and her husband rescued. Sophie particularly for the opportunity to work with marine mammals. It was her volunteer work at the marine mammal center that motivated her to attend school to become a vet tech. Working with the patients at the marine mammal hospital is always full of surprises and inspiration. Sophie talks about working with Northern fur seals, the less well known Guadalupe fur seal, California sea lions, and her work to disentange whales from fishing gear, work that is done not at the center but in the waters off of California.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Pam Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist series on Wo(men) Mind the Water dot com, I am speaking with Sophie Guarasci. Sophie worked in the business world before becoming a licensed veterinary tech. Now she works at the Marine Mammal Center, the nation’s foremost marine mammal hospital. Sophie says it’s her dream job, even though there are times she has to make difficult decisions about the treatment of severely ill animals.
The Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater dot com engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection with the ocean. Through their stories, Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
00:00:54 Pam Ferris-Olson I am speaking with Sophie Guarasci, a licensed veterinary technician dedicated to the care and conservation of marine mammals. Sophie oversees the clinical and surgical treatment and husbandry of patients at the nation’s foremost marine mammal hospital. She also supervises and trains students and volunteers who are interested in both the care and conservation of marine mammals. Sophie and her colleagues look for clues to the underlying causes that led to the animals need for care.
00:01:24 Pam Ferris-Olson Welcome Sophie, we feel extremely fortunate to have you with us. Typically, I start interviews by asking guests to talk about their background. But before you do, I want to say that I have been a long-time supporter of the Marine Mammal Center. When I first learned about the Center, it was a small operation located in the hills above the Golden Gate. Today the Marine Mammal Center campus in California has grown significantly and has a second smaller facility on the Big Island of Hawaii. The Marine Mammal Center has a volunteer force of about 1300 active volunteers and estimates it has rescued more than 24,000 marine mammals since its inception.
00:02:12 Pam Ferris-Olson Sophie, it seems you have long been interested in the care and Treatment of Animals. You cofounded a dog shelter in La Paz, Mexico. How did you come to be in La Paz? On the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico.
00:02:28 Sophie Guarasci Hi, Pam. Well, that's a good question. Originally, my husband and I were drawn down there to kite surf and scuba dive. But then we were really drawn by the beauty of the Sea of Cortez, by the abundance of marine life. I'm sure you've heard the phrase that Jacques Cousteau coined, “the aquarium of the world.” It really does merit that name. We were so drawn that we ended up packing up and moving down there full time.
00:02:57 Pam Ferris-Olson Why did you feel there was a need for a shelter and that was something you wanted to take part in?
00:03:03 Sophie Guarasci Really it was a question that somebody had to do it. I really couldn't ignore the many street dogs in need. I'd done some volunteer work in England at a dog shelter, at the RSPCA, and also recently adopted a dog in San Francisco, and just really saw a need for something like that down there. And it wasn't so much of a question that I wanted to do it but more that I really just had to do it.
00:03:31 Pam Ferris-Olson You and your husband share your home with four of them from the shelter. What was it about the dogs that made you want to adopt them and bring them to your home in California?
00:03:35 Sophie Guarasci I actually found all of them on the side of the street, different places along the highway, in a garbage dump, at a gas station. One was a little puppy, just two weeks old that was thrown in the garbage on the side of the road. So I couldn't really leave them. So they all came home with us. And you know they were supposed to be fosters. My husband wasn't really expecting to have so many dogs. But, you know, we just couldn't resist, even he could resist in the end. So they all stayed with us and we brought them back to California when we moved back.
00:04:30 Pam Ferris-Olson I know from your background that you have a degree in fashion design and you served as a vice president with a multinational financial services company. So how is it or why would you decide to go back to school to become a veterinary technician?
00:04:40 Sophie Guarasci Well, it was actually the Marine Mammal Centre that inspired me. I started out as a volunteer at the Marine Mammal Center when we moved to San Francisco 20 years ago. I actually knew about the Marine Mammal Center when I lived in England. I sponsored animals on their website. It was one of the reasons I really wanted to move to San Francisco. My husband had the opportunity to move to California and so we settled on San Francisco. I signed up to be a volunteer at the Marine Mammal Center pretty much on my first day of arriving here. And moving from England, I was in awe of the ability to work in such close proximity to all the amazing species that come through the center. So that was what really inspired me to have a career change from finance and fashion design to becoming a very technician and getting licensed here. And now I've been working at the center full-time for 14 years on staff.
00:05:42 Pam Ferris-Olson Well, I'm extremely jealous. I was unfortunate enough to have known about it and I moved away. I would have loved [to have worked there]. You know, I pay attention to what's going on, which is why I'm so glad that you came on and can share your passion and my passion with our listeners. So give us some of the basic facts that people should know about marine mammals.
00:06:08 Sophie Guarasci I mean, there are so many fascinating facts about marine mammals, so, you know, it's hard to know where to begin. Their intelligence, their physical capabilities, their resilience. But I think probably the one thing that people need to know the most is that they really are sentinels of ocean health. They tell us so much about their home, the ocean, which you know is essential to human health.
00:06:37 Pam Ferris-Olson So what aspects of working with these ocean creatures do you find most fascinating?
00:06:42 Sophie Guarasci One that really stands out to me is their resilience. I can give an example. One species that always fascinates me with just how resilient and how strong they are the little northern fur seal pups that we often get in the fall. These are species that live very far offshore from people. They are what's known as pelagic species. They rarely come ashore on to the mainland. But when we do get these patients, they’re usually young. They're three to four months old when they wean from their mothers. They're so small yet so strong. You know, they weigh between 20 to 30 lbs. And what fascinates me is that even at this small age and small size, they head out to sea for two years. They actually don't come back to land at all. They're far offshore. It always amazes me that they have these incredible abilities, and they're just so resilient, you know, to the ocean and to their environment.
00:07:51 Pam Ferris-Olson Skipping to something on the other side of the scale of measurement. How large is the largest marine mammal you've worked with and can you tell us about the challenges of trying to treat an animal of that kind of size?
00:08:06 Sophie Guarasci I mean the largest species that we work with and I've worked with personally are whales. Of all you know, from blue whales to all kinds of whales and cetaceans and dolphins. We don't bring the whales into the center, but we do respond to them in the ocean to disentangle them. If you're talking about animals on site that we treat, then the California sea lions, big, crested California male sea lions that weigh up to 800 pounds are definitely the largest animals that we have on site. They present a huge array of challenges to work with.
00:08:49 Sophie Guarasci I mean because of their size, you know, we really have to adapt protocols to work with them, to sedate and anesthetize them But also just working with them day-to-day, trying to move them, trying to crate them, cleaning in their pens. You really have to learn to work with them. Because they're so large that if you want them to move somewhere, they're not going to move unless they want to move. So you really have to understand their behavior and their psychology. You have to learn how to work with them. I think getting to know how to understand them is really an important part of learning how to treat them.
00:09:32 Pam Ferris-Olson Being a vet, particularly of marine mammals, is very creative. You have to develop protocols and work with these animals and that's an art. It's an art and a science, of course.
00:09:48 Sophie Guarasci I'm glad you said that because it really is both. It's an art and a science. There's the obviously science behind it. But working day-to-day with the animals it's a bit of an art because you have to learn to do things around them. And as I said, with the big sea lions moving them around. Every animal is different. They're all individuals and individual cases. So it's definitely an art and a skill. I think a lot of people don't realize that.
00:10:16 Pam Ferris-Olson I expect it’s a challenge trying to treat a little known marine mammal. Have you ever faced that kind of situation?
00:10:24 Sophie Guarasci Yes, I have actually and it would be the Guadalupe fur seal. Their species is a threatened species that comes from Mexico. Their main breeding ground is actually Guadalupe Island which is 100 miles offshore in northern Baja. And really before 2015, they'd rarely been seen at the Marine Mammal Center and in California waters at all. Then in 2015, we had a large El Nino weather event. We suddenly had over 30 of these animals on site.
00:11:05 Sophie Guarasci We really didn't have a strong baseline for caring for these animals or how they would respond in rehabilitation. So we had to use our 50 years’ experience with other seals and sea lions to apply with them. We really learned by just working with them, and handling them, and treating them to see how they would react and behave. And in fact they're very different from other fur seal species. They're much more shy, much more reserved. So since then we've seen an increasing number every year. They've been migrating further north. Whether it's for warming waters or fishing practices and locations of fish. We've had to develop systems and protocols to care for them specifically for their care. And we've also engaged in a lot of population and behavior research with these animals to learn more. So they're definitely a good example of treating a species that very little was known before and having to learn from them.
00:12:18 Pam Ferris-Olson Well, it sounds like one of the most important things in your job is patience. Patience with yourself to figure out how to deal with the animal and patience with the animal to, you know, have them calm down and let you work with them.
00:12:37 Sophie Guarasci I agree, patience is very key. You certainly can't rush things or predict things when it comes to working with animals every day, every situation is very unpredictable.
00:12:51 Pam Ferris-Olson It keeps it interesting.
00:12:53 Sophie Guarasci Absolutely. Every day is interesting at the marine mammal center.
00:12:57 Pam Ferris-Olson So please tell us about one of your favorite encounters with a marine mammal.
00:13:02 Sophie Guarasci Gosh, that's a difficult question. There are so many encounters that are memorable. I have to say some of my favorite moments, the most gratifying to me, are when we cut fishing line or fishing nets off patients, particularly because it's something that we as humans have caused and these injuries can cause such great suffering. But we can alleviate them right away. So that's something that's very close to my heart. It’s that project that actually took me back to La Paz because I saw a need down there with the sea lion rookeries. There are a lot of entangled animals there so let me just start doing some disentanglement work down there with the local authorities and the local vets. And we've launched 6 expeditions down there. Since then, the locals have taken up that work and are doing it themselves and continue to do it. So we've actually entangled already counting over 60 animals which is very, very gratifying to me.
00:14:18 Pam Ferris-Olson It's very nice to hear that the locals have taken it up. So what would you say to someone who thinks that saving one animal isn't very important and that your efforts and that of the Marine Mammal Center should be focused on a bigger picture?
00:14:33 Sophie Guarasci Well, I believe that conservation is a global issue. You know, we all eat from the same ocean and we rely on the same ocean, which is particularly important as our populations continue to grow. So I think everyone does need to care about it and we can all make a difference in some way.
00:14:55 Pam Ferris-Olson I expect that most people in the San Francisco area know something about marine mammals. People from landlocked states, however, may not know much about marine mammals. Only what they've seen on TV, in movies or aquaria. Why should a person, say in Iowa, care about a sea lion found in the waters off California?
00:15:17 Sophie Guarasci These animals can tell us so much about what is going on out there in their home, in the ocean, which is so tied to human health. I think one fascinating fact that always stands out to me is that in the course of our work at the Marine Mammal Center, we've discovered that roughly one in four California sea lions has cancer. And we found that there are direct ties to human-caused contaminants like PCBs. And so again, our work is so closely tied to ocean life and what's going on out there. People do need to care about that because it does impact them. They're eating the same food. And so we really do need to take this issue seriously and learn from these animals.
00:16:08 Pam Ferris-Olson Finally, Sophie, what do you think are the greatest threats to marine mammals?
00:16:14 Sophie Guarasci Unfortunately Pam, there are a lot of threats to marine mammals from climate change to overfishing to pollution to ocean debris. Just to name a few. But I think we always have to have hope. Hopeful that with care and attention, we can restore a healthful balance to the oceans. And I do believe that everybody can make a difference. Every time we save an animal and we release them back to the ocean, it makes me hopeful that we can make a difference.
00:16:48 Pam Ferris-Olson I am extremely grateful to you, not only for being on, but for the work that you do both for the animals and in conserving the ocean. So thank you very much.
I’d like to remind listeners that I’ve been speaking with Sophie Guarasci, who is concerned with the medical care and conservation of marine mammals. Sophie and her colleagues at the Marine Mammal Center also work to understand the underlying causes for their patients illnesses.
00:17:18 Pam Ferris-Olson Sophie is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. The series can be viewed on Wo(men) Mind the Water.com, Museum on Main Street, and YouTube. An audio-only version of this podcast is available on Women Mind the Water dot com, on iTunes, and Spotify. Women Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.