Author: Jake Stout

The next department I worked in was the cold water marine department, which houses marine life from Eastport ME, the West Coast, and of course the octopuses. My morning started by helping clean sand for tanks for incoming fish and invertebrates from a recent collecting trip to Eastport. When I wasn’t washing sand I would spend my time playing with the two octopuses. Their names are Freya and The Professor, both have very different personalities. The Professor is a little younger and smaller, while Freya is larger and is right up with the public, The Professor sits behind Freya in another tank. Playing with the both of them it’s hard to not think that they are intelligent creatures. They investigated me by pulling my arms into the tank, I made sure they wouldn’t pull my arms too far, the people watching would be pretty freaked out to see an octopus pulling a human arm into its tank. It was amazing to feel each of the suckers working independently pulling and tasting at different strengths while the octopus changes color and texture. At one point Freya began to pull my hand towards her beak and that would really hurt so I pulled my hand back feeling the full muscular power of octopus. Working with Freya and The Professor was a mesmerizing experience that really made me see them on a different otherworldly level, it was truly amazing.

 

 

The next day at the aquarium I worked with the penguins. The New England Aquarium has three species; african, rockhopper and little blue. Each is very different and has distinct personalities. I worked first with the little blues, the smallest species of penguin. They were molting their feathers so I cleaned up the feathers from the water and washed off the rocks they sat on. As they all huddled together in a tight clump I brushed of all of the fish they had digested or regurgitated. It smelled pretty bad at times. After lunch I worked with the rockhopper penguins who were much more aggressive and hungry. I fed them some fish sticking it in their faces till they ate it. Each penguin is monitored, making sure every single one gets the right amount of food and that no one is falling behind. Some were very eager to eat and would peck at my fingers and swim around me bumping into my back, others would sit far away from me and I would have to walk up to them and coax them to eat. After feeding them I went around cleaning the bottom of the enclosure scrubbing away algae and any food scraps. At one point I was walking around the rock when one sitting on a rock crapped on me. A family saw it happen and burst out laughing, it was a lot more fun for them than me, needless to say I thoroughly washed out my wetsuit.

I arrived at the New England Aquarium bright and early to meet Dan Dolan, friend of the Sea Rovers and long time aquarium volunteer and diver in the GOT (Giant Ocean Tank). Once I met Dan he brought me up to the dive locker and kitchen where I dropped off my stuff and got to work preparing fish food. I pulled apart squids, debeaking and depending them. I then got some lettuce ready for Myrtle the green sea turtle. Myrtle weighs in at 540 lbs, and is the oldest and one of the most iconic animals at the aquarium. The rest of the morning I fed the needle fish pieces of shrimp and fish, and Myrtle the lettuce I had prepared.

Then I headed back into the dive locker and got geared up to do a dive in the tank. A few of my friends got to come and see me as I went into the tank and took pictures with me. I got to pat a green moray, and rub Myrtle’s back. I swam around looking at the many fish species from schools of grunts to the hog fish and french angels. My personal favorite was the black drum fish. A kind of ugly looking brown fish about three or four feet long that has short barbles under its chin. At one point a grouper came near it and I found out why it’s called a black drum. It started making this deep booming drumming noise scaring the grouper away. It was amazing to see inside the tank that I had walked around so many times before.

 

My last day at the National Aquarium was spent looking around at the exhibits that I didn’t get to see the rest of the week. I couldn’t dive because I was flying home later that afternoon. I looked around at the Rainforest and Australian galleries and their complex tanks. The diversity of life at the National aquarium amazes me. There is something from every part of the globe here for everyone to see. I had an amazing week and did five awesome dives, thanks to Holly, Billy and Wally for hosting me!

On my fourth day at the Aquarium we went to the Animal Care and Rescue Center (ACRC). There Holly and her team did training in one of the pools with divers figuring out best methods to save an unconscious diver and help if need be. Holly’s team of Josh, Jackie and Taylor Grace all helped to think of emergency scenarios and how they could be avoided and remedied. Holly and Jackie were the divers along with one of the staff from the ACRC who were in the water while Josh and Taylor and Ashleigh Clews, the director of the ACRC, watched and performed surface emergency scenarios. Obstacles that faced the team were poor design of the tank, there were cat walks that prohibited divers to go too far around without the tender not being able to pull them back. The tank is great for sharks and other fish but not so much for divers.

Once the training was done and best rescue procedures were thought of I went to work with some of the team with the ACRC, including Meredith Myers. She helped me prepare food for some of the animals housed on exhibit or in holding, these included lungfish, a cowfish, a map puffer named Duncan and many turtles. I went around to the tanks feeding some of the turtles throwing allotted amounts of lettuce into the tanks. One of my favorite turtles is a pig nosed turtle named Funzo, this species is the only freshwater turtle with fins.

Funzo was a charismatic fella who was very curious of what was going on and who you were. He is target feed by touching a colored wheel and give a piece of food.  My time in the ACRC was really cool, I got to see a lot of the amazing behind the scenes of how the aquarium runs it quarantine and deals with sick animals.

This morning Simon the stingray was overdue for a spine clipping. In the morning I worked with Katie, Emily, Jennie Janson, the assistant curator of Blue Wonders and a diver, and Josh Foronda one of Holly’s dive team. Katie and Jennie went down to catch Simon while Josh tended the divers (made sure nothing happened to them while diving), and Emily helped to cut Simon’s spine and measure and weigh him. After a few failed attempts to catch him he was finally on the platform being weighed and measured, his spine was cut so that he didn’t injure any of the many divers that come through the tank every day. Cutting a spine of a ray is pretty much like a fingernail, it grows back soon after. Simon was healthy and thrown back soon after. I of course asked if I could keep the spine since it’s such a cool souvenir!

Next I worked with Holly and her team in Shark Alley. Shark Ally is a 250,000 gallon exhibit with 16 individuals across 7 species, and the tank is only 9 ft deep. While Holly and Jackie Cooper, another member of Holly’s team did some training with Randy, a dummy (I don’t mean he was stupid he’s actually a mannequin), Jennie fixed up some of the base of Shark Alley, and I sat along the bottom collecting teeth. The part of the tank we were working in was blocked off so that the sand tigers, saw sharks and rays wouldn’t disturb us and we wouldn’t disturb them. Over the hour long dive I collected 69 teeth, not bad for my first time in the tank.

After lunch I got a chance to dive with Jackie in Black Tip Reef, I’m the first intern who has gotten to dive in this exhibit and it was amazing! The sharks are swimming all around you, fish are going crazy it’s a hectic place. The tank itself holds 270,000 gallons, and has 650-700 individuals across 80 species. The tanks ranges from 18-7ft deep, but it is mostly all shallow so shallow that my dive computer only registered 18 minutes over an hour long dive. Some of the highlights from the tank are the two zebra sharks. The female is named Zoey and the male is Zeke. Zoey is partially blind and she swam right into me hitting me in the mask, it was so cool to be hit by such a big shark! The same thing happened with Calypso the green sea turtle. She is missing one fin because she was cold stunned and that’s why she is at the aquarium. I was in the deeper end of the tank in front of an underwater viewing window when Calypso come by almost smacking me in the head with the bottom of her shell. Unlike Zoey she has no excuse. I quickly breathed out all the air from my lungs and descended a few feet as I saw camera flashes going off behind me and bubble spilling around Calypso. She kept on swimming and I managed to get off one great shot of her coming at me. It was truly an amazing dive.

My morning started by getting food ready for the aquarium’s many animals. I cut up a crab, and stuffed squid and bait fish with vitamin pills for the sharks and rays in Black Tip Reef. I worked with Emily Anderson and Katie Diciccio, divers and aquarists who help run the Atlantic Coral Reef and Black Tip Reef. We headed down to feed the large whiptail rays and the nine black tips in the newest exhibit Black Tip Reef. To feed the rays we used a long pole and forced it in front of their face then they would sit up on it and chew the food on the end. You could feel them chewing and almost hear a crunching sound coming up the pole. After the four rays were all feed we moved on to the sharks. The exhibit has two zebra sharks, nine black tips, and a couple wobbegongs. We fed the black tips by hanging a target just above the water as sort of a training measure they would touch or go around the red buoy and be fed. Instead of the target feeding of the rays this was a broadcast feeding of all the black tips at once. It was at times a mass frenzy throwing squid and fish parts near their faces.

After feeding the sharks I went over to the jellies department, where I met Annie Miller, one of the aquarists for the jellies. She explained the ins and outs of how to keep such delicate creatures alive in captivity with certain amounts of current and food. One of the major things that the jellies department tries to avoid is “jelly jams”, this is when the current is to weak or strong and the jellies begin to get stuck in the filtration system and can clog the pipes and kill the whole tank if not taken care of. After being introduced to all the jellies on exhibit I went over to the jelly culture lab where the team cultures the jellies and raises them to be put on exhibit. The lab raises most of the jellies that go to exhibit and any that they have and don’t need can be shipped to other aquariums or be feed to other jellies. Matt Wade is one of the directors of the jellies culture lab and is currently working on raising box jellies. Because they are level one venomous animals they are taken very seriously, though they are only a few centimeters now they could grow very big and be extremely dangerous. Matt showed me some of the jellies under the microscope looking at the different life stages and how complex they are. For being considered so simple and well brain less they are actually very complex.

After lunch I headed around with a couple of the gallery aquarists. I first worked with Roxie Garibay who runs the live corals gallery. She went through the care and maintenance of these tanks and how important it is to keep track of the health of the corals. We fed a few of the fish and she showed me how they grow corals behind the scenes. I next worked with Allen Kattyan who runs a few different galleries from the striped bass, to the shipwreck and kelp forest tanks. What amazed me most is that he dives in some of the tanks filled with pieces of fake shipwrecks and totally cramped. For Holly it’s a hard job to keep him safe in such a small enclosed area and if anything went wrong it wouldn’t be very good.

After working with the aquarists I headed to the dive locker for my third and final dive in the Atlantic Coral Reef. I again went in with the volunteers except today was the Tuesday A team. I photographed a lot of the same subjects refining my shots from the other day. I got some good shots of Simon the sting ray and of the super male hogfish in the tank that is Holly’s favorite fish.

 

 

 

After my short flight to Baltimore I met Holly Bourbon. Holly is the DSO (dive safety officer) of the National Aquarium, and an associate Sea Rover. Holly runs the entire dive program at the National Aquarium, not an easy job managing people who are diving with sometimes potentially dangerous animals, in precarious places, and you have to deal with over 200 volunteer divers. But somehow Holly does it, and she does it really well.

For the week I stayed with Holly, her husband Billy, and of course Wally their dog. Holly, Billy and Wally made me feel right at home and more like family than my own family. Even bringing me to a wedding. My first few days here we went on walks at wildlife sanctuaries and toured Wally’s favorite walking paths. But what I was really here for was the aquarium!

This Monday was one of the few Mondays in my life I will be excited for. Holly and I went around getting my dive locker situated, meeting people, and getting my ID ready. Before i could do any diving in the aquarium I had to do a check out dive with Holly. We went in the Atlantic Coral Reef, a race track tank that holds 335,000 gallons, houses about 800-900 individuals across 90 species, and is 13ft deep. The Monday A team of volunteer divers descended onto the dive platform getting ready to clean coral replicas and feed fish. Holly and I swam down to the end of the tanks where we practiced skills. I removed my mask put it back on and saw all these kids staring at me. I wasn’t prepared to be on display, but over time I grew to like it and waved to all the kids. As I took my weight belt off and put it back on the kids kept staring at me for almost the entire 25 minutes we took to go through skills. One new skill Holly taught me was how to breath off a free flow regulator, just kind of sipping the air from it. I did that for 40 seconds with people watching on, I could only imagine what they were thinking me sitting there with masses of bubbles flying around my head. Once I’d completed the skills we did a short orientation around the tank. After that I was cleared to dive.

My first photography dive in the tank took place after lunch. I went in with the volunteer divers. As they cleaned I photographed the multitude of fish. One challenge photographically was that the inside of the tank was pretty bare and didn’t have much background to it. I was forced to come up with some way to make the photos interesting. I decided to shoot everything with a slow shutter speed. This way I made interesting shots and wouldn’t have to worry as much about the background. I was even greeted by Felix the resident green moray eel, who is usually hiding. One of the harder subjects to photograph was the tarpon. It’s basically like photographing a mirror with bright lights. The tarpon was intrigued by me because of the massive shiny camera and it thought I was going to give him food. I would sit in one spot wait for the tarpon to come by swim around me then I would get a few shots. Most shots weren’t that great but I got a few good ones. Another favorite subject for me was the many blue tangs and doctor fish feeding on the lettuce. I could get as close as I wanted to them and they wouldn’t be afraid of me. By the end of the day I got some pretty nice shots and had an amazing time in the aquarium.

I spent the day with Vin Malkoski working with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. Our goal was to find a spot that would be a good site for an artificial reef. An artificial reef is a bunch of large concrete that is molded into certain shapes that marine life can grow on, live in and hunt around. We were looking in the Cape Cod bay area at sites that had been previously selected, we were visiting them again to dive them and see what we could find for life. Mark Rousseau was one of the project leaders on the boat along with three other divers, Vin, and Yann Herrera Fuchs, the Rolex Our World Underwater Society Scholar, who was also working with Vin. We headed out into the bay, the day was nice and sunny and warm, good day for diving. The water was not very choppy but wasn’t perfectly calm either.

We reached our first site, half of us geared up to get in the water while the other half stayed on the boat to dive after us. A transect line had been laid down for us to follow and find our way around the proposed site. The first thing I noticed about the site was the abundance of sea robins. Quirky, odd, almost prehistoric reptile like fish, they have large pectoral fins that they spread out to swim away from something, when they’re not crawling through the sand with strange finger like appendages. I’ve always wanted to see a sea robin, and I wasn’t disappointed we saw quite a few sea robins about 10 or so total. Some would hide in the sand other would ran away from you and others would just sit in front of you. We also many spider crabs, a few lady crabs, and a patch of squid eggs. Squid eggs look like translucent torpedoes all huddled together on a rock. The site was really nice and might be a good spot for an artificial reef.

 

In between sites I had another bout of sea sickness, even with the fairly calm conditions that we had. Vin suggested I hang off the diver line off the back of the boat so I sat in the water for a few minutes and floated there. My sickness went away a little while after. We then geared up and dropped down to the next site. This site supposedly had a sunken plane so that was extra incentive to go looking around. We never found any plane but we found plenty of lobster. They sat in little burrows they had dug out in the sand. To me it seemed like a pretty bad home compared to the lobsters in Cape Ann that hid beneath rocks. Swimming along they would flare their claws and I could just grab them by the carapace and have a look at them. Vin picked up a huge egger female that was way over the legal limit but they’re still cool to look at. This site was a nice site as well but I believe the first site had more life that would benefit from an artificial reef, though those lobster could use a better home.

It was amazing to see a completely new ecosystem in New England waters so completely different than North in Gloucester and Rockport or South in Jamestown. Work that people like Vin and Mark do for the Division of Fisheries is essential to having a healthy ecosystem and maintaining fish stocks, and it’s pretty fun to dive different sites in New England and help the ecosystems we visit.

Finally the week ended and we got to the competition, the part everyone was waiting for. There are lots of prizes for a multitude of categories including wide angle and macro, both traditional and unrestricted (without and with editing), a fluorescent category, and sharks category, and of course video. I only entered the wide angle and sharks categories because that’s all I really shot.

I came to The Digital Shootout ready to learn and maybe get one good shot, what I didn’t go to do was win any awards. But I did! I won an honorable mention in sharks for one of my motion blur shots, third in the wide angle traditional for a shot of a barracuda under a dock, and finally first place in sharks for another motion blurred shark that I made black and white. I was so ecstatic that I won! I almost swept the sharks category with only one shark dive which was my first shark dive. My trip to Roatan was one of the best weeks of my life. I am eternally grateful to the entire crew from Backscatter, and Berkley, Erin, and Christian for helping me so much and making me realize that I love underwater photography just as much if not more than terrestrial photography.