UF’s new director of marine mammal medicine brings experience, perspective to job

Dr. Deke Beusse believes luck is what you make it.

Put another way, in his view, there’s no such thing as being in the right place at the right time.

“I put myself in the right place at the right time early in my career, and I tell all my students this,” said Beusse, 70, the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine’s new director of marine mammal medicine.

Beusse has longstanding roots with the college, and as president of the Florida Veterinary Medical Association back in the late 1960s, he remembers being “right in the middle” of the political struggle to build the UF veterinary school.

“Me and Wy Cripe and Dean (Charlie) Cornelius and others from the FVMA just fought those battles until the school was built,” he said. “After the vet school was formed, I spoke to the first freshman class during orientation, and I think I’ve talked to every class but one ever since then.”

When students tell him how lucky he was to hook up with Sea World of Florida (for which he provided veterinary services for 30 years), he tells him that relationship was never about luck.

“I think you have to donate your time, and things happen from that,” he said. “I was a practitioner in Orlando back in 1960, a couple of years after graduating from veterinary school at the University of Georgia, and there weren’t but ten or twelve veterinarians in Orlando at that time. There were rumors that something big was going to happen in Orlando and it turned out to be Disney.”

Thinking Disney might create a wild animal park, Beusse traveled to Busch Gardens in Tampa every Wednesday to learn about exotic animal medicine.

“It turns out Disney didn’t do anything like this, but then Sea World did,” he said.

For 12 years, Beusse was Sea World’s only veterinarian. His mission was caring for and collecting animals, which he accomplished by traveling all over the world. During the same time period, he built two veterinary clinics in Orlando.

“Deke has been all over the world as a consultant for different marine life parks,” said Randy Runnels, assistant curator of mammals for Sea World of Florida.

Runnels said that when he began working at Sea World in 1980, Beusse was “already a veteran,” having been associated with the company for nearly 10 years.

“He’s the kind of person who will ask you how you’re doing in the morning and really mean it,” Runnels said. “He’s just a good guy. I’ve been on a number of rescues with him, from pilot whales to false killer whales, to dolphins, manatees and other species.”

Beusse has pioneered procedures with marine mammals that now are routinely performed. For example, he was involved with the first veterinary team to anesthetize a manatee.

Previously retired, Beusse is now settling into the new three-year position at UF, where he plans to establish collaborations with private and state-funded marine laboratories. He plans to teach a 15-hour course on marine mammals and to provide veterinary students with new learning opportunities related to marine mammal research.

Beusse would love to see UF have a program similar to Cornell University’s popular “Aquavet” program at Wood’s Hole in Massachusetts. He envisions starting such a program at the Whitney Laboratory in Marineland and assisting marine parks by working with rescued animals and perhaps retired animals as well.

“It’s true that the school will never house marine mammals here, but we can do so much to facilitate knowledge in this area,” Beusse said.

“When people think about marine mammals in the United States, they will think of UF.”