Evan Rozhon

Hey everybody. I'm Evan. And I like the water.

When I was five years old, I went on a family fishing trip to a rural river in the Middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin. We stayed here, and the owners and employees at Pine Grove became family. And then the next year I went back, and the year after that, and every year after and now I'm here. Sometime during all of these trips, I gaining an incredible appreciation and fascination of the water. Everything in it, around it, affected by it. Rivers, lakes, oceans, ponds, streams, whatever.

I was lucky enough to have such wonderful experiences growing up, and I am lucky enough now to be able to explore my interest in marine life my senior year. I'll be working at the OdySea Aquarium and looking at Coral. More specifically, I'll be recreating the effects of air pollution on the water in the ocean, and directly looking at how coral growth and recovery is effected. You can read more about my background and my proposal here.

I want to take a second to thank OdySea Aquarium for allowing me the opportunity to work at their facility, to thank my college counselor Megan Mitrovich for the work that she did to get the placement at the aquarium, and to thank my bio teacher Ryan Carey for helping me create a quality proposal. On a vaguely related note, I could totally write an Oscar acceptance speech.

I am excited and ready to start this project, and I hope you check in on me from time to time. I'll also use this blog to post whatever happens to be on my mind or what's going on in my life if I have space. So not only am I excited about this project, I'm excited about the backpacking trips I'm planning to Zion and Glacier National Park. Look them up, seriously, They're so pretty. And lastly, I will leave you with a .gif that I love.

The Final Post

Hello everyone. So this week I decided to end my involvement with the senior project program. So no more OdySea, and no more blog posts. So thank you all for all of your comments, I genuinely enjoyed interacting with all of you.

For all of the freshman and sophomores reading this, yes you should do a senior project yourself. Although I did not complete mine, I still found it to be an incredibly valuable experience. I learned more than I ever expected to about myself, aquariums, and marine life. And I also found out that while I still have a passion for marine life, it has no place in an aquarium. I would much rather be outside than inside.

All in all, it was a great experience, just not the one for me.

Figuring it All Out

To be brief, this has been a wild week at the aquarium. Well, for me. For everybody else it was standard.

My first day was Sunday, and it started off quick. I am mostly working with the team that is responsible for feeding and taking care of all of the animals in the carousel, which includes sharks, rays, sea turtles, and a whole host of other, smaller fish. That team is headed by Johnny.

So back to the first day. I met Johnny in the main food preparation kitchen. It was just me and him in the kitchen, and he had me preparing the food that we would later feed to the sharks. I have next to no experience in the kitchen, preparing fish. So there was definitely a steep learning curve. After a brief instruction on how to properly cut up an entire salmon (which were frozen, by the way). So after butchering a salmon I got the hang of it and made it through right as my hands were becoming numb. The next step after weighing and sorting all of the pieces is to put the vitamins into all the fishy chunks. My hands had been resigned to smelling like fish for the rest of the day.

Then came the actual feeding, which is done at specific stations corresponding to specific species of shark. The sharks were fed with basically a giant tong on the end of a big stick. It was pretty fun to watch, and some of the team members dropped hints that eventually I might be able to do the feeding. So stay tuned for that.

The other incredibly notable part of my past week was the sea turtles. One turtle, Valor, has an air pocket trapped in his body so he is unable to swim on his own. He simply floats on the water, and it is pretty cute. Anyways, Johnny told me he was going to take Valor out of the pool. In my head I started imagining how that works and what types of contraptions they have to get a sea turtle out of the water. And then I watched as Johnny simply called Valor over and lifted him up and out of the water. Oh. Simple. Duh. Valor was taken out of the pool so he could dry off and have his shell cleaned. Valor gets weights put on the back of his shell periodically so he can sink and swim around like the rest of the turtles. It is even more cute than when he just floats around. Long story short, I ended up taking care of Valor for about an hour while he dried off. Sometimes he would get a bit riled up, so I would calm him down and keep him happy. 

All in all, it was a great week. I will say that Johnny has been nothing but understanding and patient and helpful with me as I bumble my way through the aquarium. And yes, next week I should have pictures of everything. I didn't want to push it this past week. Thanks for listening, and see you next week.

Hey everybody. So I have news.

The good is that I now know what exactly I am doing at OdySea Aquarium. Well, for the most part. I will be helping with the shark feeding three times a week. So that will be an incredible and unique experience.

The bad news is that everything I've done until now is basically rendered useless. The coral is out, because the aquarium doesn't have any. Bummer. What's worse is that all of your wonderful comments will now have to take a whole new direction. But hey, sharks are fun.

For the past week I've been in and out of the aquarium getting oriented with things. I got to hang out with a sloth, and some sea lions. Today I learned about a whole lot of marine related artifacts. My favorite was the nautilus. It's an ancient relative of squid and they're pretty. They have a bunch of capsules on the the inside of them that they can fill with water or empty the water out of. This allows them to adjust their buoyancy.

Anyways, I'll be at the aquarium four days a week, mostly helping with the shark feeding and whatever else needs to be done. And I'm very excited to be able to work at the aquarium, especially after having been there.

As far as pictures go, cell phones seem to be generally frowned upon while working, so I don't think pictures are gonna happen, especially anytime soon. But I wish I could show you that sloth.

Till next week - Evan