Today is my first day at the New England Aquarium. I will be coming here for the next week and working in a different department everyday. Today is the penguin exhibit! I met Dan Dolan, who was a volunteer diver at the aquarium for years, and he showed me where to park and took me on a quick tour. He then handed me off to Lila from the penguin exhibit and I got my day started. There was an awesome group of people working in penguins, and they were all so welcoming. I knew it was going to be a great day. Olivia, an intern for the penguin exhibit who was my age, was picking through smelt (a type of fish) to prepare it for feeding. She had to compost any fish that was missing a tail or head, or had any holes in it. This is because they didn’t want any contaminated food getting to the penguins. I then got suited up in a 7 millimeter wetsuit and booties and showered off to make sure I wasn’t bringing anything into the exhibit that would contaminate it.
This included removing any earrings or hair clips, and making sure my nails weren’t painted a bright color. The penguins are very curious with bright colors, and some of them will try to eat small objects so we had to be very aware of what we brought in and made sure we also brought it out. I was joining Brendan first and feeding the African Penguins. There are a total of 39 of them! I got to feed a couple, including Seneke who had the same birthday as me! When we finished feeding, Brendan showed me how to scrub the islands in the exhibit to get rid of the guano (penguin poop and pee) and keep the space clean. It was nice to be up on a rock and out of the water as I was able to warm up a bit. Then Seneke, my birthday buddy,needed a foot treatment. He had little calluses/blisters on the bottom of both his feet and gets treatments every two days to heal them. Brendan held Seneke while I cleaned the pads of his feet with Betadine, dried them, and then applied his ointment. I then sprayed an aluminum spray on his feet. I think the purpose of the spray was to seal the area so that the medicine didn’t just wash away in the water. He got 3 fish as a reward for being good during his treatment. We had a lunch break and I got to talk with some of the Aquarium interns which was fun since they were from different departments and had different goals for their time here.
In the afternoon, I was in charge of vacuuming. Olivia showed me how to use the underwater vacuum and Jonathon (another intern) helped when I had questions. I patrolled the whole exhibit to pick up any fish bits from feeding, guano, and looked for any foreign objects that guests may have dropped in the process. While doing this, a guest dropped a toy boat, which I retrieved. Any objects have to be sanitized before they can be returned back to the owner. Then Emily, one of the pegui staff, needed my help. She was fixing an old sprinkler on one of the islands and there was a ton of built up glue around it. While she chipped the glue away I vacuumed it up before it became a hazard to the penguins. I definitely felt the cold once I was done vacuuming and a warm shower was so nice. That was the end of the day for me, just around 4:30pm, so I packed up my stuff and thanked everyone for showing me the ropes. On Tuesday, I will be in Galleries with Bill Murphy and look forward to the rest of the week!