DESTINATION: Conserving and educating at the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories

Using wavelike locomotion to propel itself out of the sediment on the sandy bottom, the olive-brown Southern stingray, a non-aggressive marine animal, slaps up against the sidewall of the tank - splashing water all over Jack Rudloe, the 77-year old co-founder of Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories.

The pride of Panacea, the lab has been in continuous operation since 1963.

The laboratory has supplied marine wildlife and invertebrates throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, to colleges and universities, while always maintaining a 25,000-gallon aquarium with marine-life exhibits open to the public.

As a non-profit organization, all sales go towards sustaining the institute.

“No aquarium,” even those large buildings housing aquatic animals in large vivariums, Rudloe brags, “has as many [tanks] as we have. We have about 1,300 researchers and we host field-trips for 250 regional schools, from Florida, Alabama, and Georgia.”

Located along U.S. Highway 98, the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab is a communal, deep-ocean park of huge fishes and porpoises.

They focus on more-minimalist species that make their home in the ocean, like golden-flecked sea horses that hide behind seaweed, red hermit crabs with bulging blue ‘peepers’ that carry anemones on their shells, or web burrfish, slow-moving puffers with eyes the color of emeralds.

From the bay estuaries, Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories retrieves the specimens to fill their ‘touch tanks’ - where guests can actually handle live creatures they’re unacquainted with.

In Crab World, both the Fiddler Crab and Horseshoe Crab properties house glass pools containing clams, conchs, purple sea urchins, and crabs.

Elsewhere in glass aquaria, starfish glide effortlessly across the makeshift seashore; elementary-school youngsters Louden Vanluven and Declan Cazee have both hands in the rectangular glass pool, up to their elbows, grappling for sand stars, whelks, and sea pansies.

“I [appreciate] that you can touch everything…it’s more interactive,” Anri Martins admits, fondling a thick-skinned sea cucumber. “Definitely different from other aquariums.”

For Allyson Chin, who worked at the lab for a couple of years but moved on to continue her education, leaving was bittersweet.

Visitors to the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories stand beside a shark feeding tank - one of the lab’s interactive exhibits that educate visitors about marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.

“What I liked most is that, because we’re a marine biological gulf supply aquarium, we get animals from all the other [aqua-parks]. We supply animals to AZA-accredited aquariums, like Monterey Bay and New York.” Chin said. “[In January], we shipped 1,000 pounds of jellyfish to the Georgia Aquarium.”

As for Rudloe, after 30 years tending to the lab, at times, he admits, “I’m not as enthralled as I once was. But no matter how burnt-out you might get, when a bus-load of eager kids shows up, you regain your enthusiasm.”

Before COVID, Rudloe says the aquarium got lots of field trips from Gadsden County schools.

“Many of the kids have never seen these kinds of animals before. Some are scared, but the teachers tell me they’re less scared after touching them.”

For Rudloe, that’s the ultimate perk.

“This is a touchy, feely kind of place,” said Rudloe. “One day, a blind girl came here; she could identify everything just by touching.”

That’s when it hit him - sometimes you just have to be able to put your fingers on it to learn about it.

Ergo, the vast assortment of touch tanks at the aquarium.

There are invariably more aquariums, though, with LOOK ONLY signs, identified by a pair of cartoon eyeballs.

“These are the animals that ‘touch’ back,” Rudloe snickers. “In other words, they might bite.”

With the COVID factor, Rudloe knows the hordes of field-trippers aren’t coming.

The Gulf Specimen Marine Lab is only garnering 10% of its normal income - the only thing fueling the lab’s continued existence is ‘pure stubbornness’ he says.

Well - stubbornness and volunteers.

“The research lab ALWAYS needs volunteers,” Rudloe adds.

Even more than volunteers, the marine lab needs donations and grants.

“The vessels are the real ‘financial cancer’,” Rudloe acknowledges. “We need endowments for our boats.”

Boats plying the Gulf’s coastline to catch additional species for scientific study and, in cold winters, to rescue sea turtles on neighboring barrier islands.

“One year, we had 65+ sea turtles to be rescued, mostly greens, with a few loggerheads and Kemps’ ridleys,” said Rudloe. “When the [temperatures] are too cold, if you can’t warm up the seawater, they’ll freeze to death.”

Luckily, no turtles brought back to the marine lab perished, a fact the laboratory is proud of.

Another source of pride for Jack Rudloe - whose career began working on shrimp boats and selling the strange creatures he found lurking beneath the surface to labs at Harvard and Yale - was his wife, Anne, who succumbed to cancer in 2012.

“She was the Horseshoe Crab Queen,” he beams, “And the first to blow the whistle on pollution at Wakulla Springs.”

An outdoor exhibit at the aquarium celebrates Anne Rudloe’s fascination with this oceanic arthropod.

Married over 40 years, Jack and Anne started Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories together; however, he says that she deserves credit for converting their simple supply business into a scholastic place for the public.

In January 2021, Northwest Florida Water Management posthumously awarded her the 2020 ‘River and Bay Champion Award’ for tirelessly safeguarding the river and bays in northwestern Florida.

“Anne Rudloe’s passion for conservation and education throughout her career earned her national recognition,” said Board Chairman George Roberts. “But her biggest impact may be found in the thousands of children who learned about marine biology from touring the Panacea lab she founded.”

In spite of the ongoing struggle for survival - from the pandemic, 2018’s Hurricane Michael, and personal tragedy - Jack Rudloe still has plans for a learning center with a big shark tank.

“The equipment to keep the water clean will be expensive,” with the need for brand-new machinery, plus funding for the ozone/filtration systems, plumbing and piping. Currently, water to run all of the tanks is pumped in from the bay, then sterilized. “The utility bills alone are killing us.”

Frequently, Jack Rudloe finds himself at odds with the locals, who, like him, work in the maritime industries - shrimping, boat-building, crabbing and fishing.

“Many of those who make their living off the water have contempt for the habitats. Ask them which they prefer, ‘the green of the tree or the green of the dollar’, they’ll pick the money every time,” Rudloe says.

No matter what life throws at Jack Rudloe (writer and environmental activist) and his beloved Marine Lab, you can bet he’ll meet it like the sharp-tongued ‘fishmonger’ he claims to be – with feistiness, gumption, and a ‘saint or sinner’ attitude.

Vickie Lillo - Gadsden County News Service

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DESTINATION: Conserving and educating at the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories

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