For my last day at the aquarium, I got to take a look behind the scenes at how some of the many galleries in the New England Aquarium are run! I spent the day with Summer, the head aquarist for the tropical galleries, as well as her intern Nick. We spent the first part of the morning going over all of the usual day to day maintenance for the gallery exhibits, and it was interesting to see how some of the life support systems are taken care of. We did checks on things such as the tank temperatures, protein skimmers, and more; all of which are vital to a clean and healthy exhibit. While I had some minimal experience in taking care of fish at home, it was really insightful to see how things such as protein skimmers work to use air bubbles to clean the surface of the water, capturing things such as fats/oils and grime on the water’s surface. Once the protein skimmers were all cleaned out, we dried and rinsed some more cleaning equipment that we would be using later on.
After the morning routine was done, Nick showed me the way the food is prepped for the galleries. Each exhibit got an assortment of foods, appropriate for both the amount of fish in each, as well as depending on what level/type of nutrients they require. While some of the tanks are fed in a simple method of scattering the food across the surface, some exhibits such as those which house venomous animals require special care and safety precautions to avoid any hazards presented by the animals themselves. These precautions can look anything like feeding the animals from a distance, to even training the animals to be target fed!
Summer and Nick went through feeding all of the exhibits in the tropical gallery, and then it was time for lunch after a quick cleanup! We all had a nice and relaxing lunch on the dock outside, and even got ice cream from the stand in front of the aquarium. Once lunch was done, Nick and I got to help out with a special project of catching comb jellies that had been washing ashore! We worked with a team of interns and staff at the aquarium to scoop up the numerous ctenophores gently in large cups in order for them to be as healthy as possible. We caught the comb jellies for a while, and then decided to head back inside and to some final cleaning for the day. We went through scrapping the walls of the tanks to make sure no algae was growing the wound be visible to aquarium goers, no would it impact the health of the exhibit.
Today was a lucky day for me, as it was the first day a new giant pacific octopus was being placed on exhibition! We got to watch as it was placed in and explored its new home. Over all today was an amazingly insightful and fun way to end a once in a lifetime experience at the New England Aquarium. Thank you so much to the incredible staff and volunteers who made the experience so incredible, as well as Dan Dolan who organized the experience!