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.
