National Aquarium Day 4: Feedings and More Diving!

Today we were back at the aquarium nice and early. In the morning I got to work with Alan, a Senior Aquarist for the Blue Wonders area. The first thing we did was prep food for varying species that were on the schedule to be fed today. I chopped up some fish while Alan’s intern, Savannah, chopped up some big squid. We put most of the chopped food in the freezer, and took some of it to the Blacktip Reef Habitat to first feed Zoe the Zebra Shark. Alan showed me how to do it, and I was able to feed her myself!We then moved over to the other side of the habitat to feed 7 Blacktip Reef Sharks. These sharks are fed differently from the previous one. A sling type of thing is put in the water, and in order to get their food, the sharks have to swim through the sling. They are doing this so that the sharks get more comfortable with the sling being in the water, as it is the tool they use to extract the sharks if needed.

Once they had gone through all 9lbs of food, we packed up. When pulling the sling out of the water, Alan handed me a Blacktip Reef sharks tooth that had come out during feeding and got caught on the sling. So cool! We then got more food and brought it to the Atlantic Coral Reef Habitat so I could feed the tarpon and Savannah could feed Sophie, the singular Blacknose Shark. The tarpon was much more eager to eat than Sophie. After that feeding, I went behind the scenes to watch the feeding of Jeremiah, a Ruff Tailed Ray that has trouble eating enough. He is kept in a seperate tank to both feed him more and to train him to come to the surface to eat.

After lunch, I got into my wetsuit and headed back to the Atlantic Coral Reef habitat with 4 other volunteers. The volunteers had to scrub the exhibit, and I got to take photos. It was super cool to be back in this same habitat. I decided to take the strobes off my camera because I hadn’t dove inside with a camera before, so I wanted to see how the ambient light looked. I also didn’t want to make any of the visitors mad with the flash as the tank is in the shape of a racetrack with the visitors in the middle. I got some good shots of the tank with the ambient light, I may have gotten better ones with strobes, but it was a learning experience.

When we got back to Hollys, I packed up all my things and checked in for my flight as I leave tomorrow night. One more day to go, and I will be exploring the jellyfish lab/area!