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I met up with Bill Murphy who is a Senior Aquarist for Galleries at the New England Aquarium. He showed me around from the public’s point of view, and then we went behind the scenes to see how the aquarists and their interns run the Galleries. Bill is in charge of the species from New England (like this orange lobster on the left) and Olympia which is on the West Coast close to Canada. Bills coworker, Allison, has a Gallery which is the mirror image of his but she works with all freshwater species. When we were walking through this area, Bill stopped to help Allison clean the anaconda tank. The anaconda was 16 feet long! While in that area, I met Joe Masi who is my high school marine science teacher’s brother. Small world! Allison had an intern, Joseph, who showed me the electric eel. There were massive gloves that he had to wear when he would reach into the tank in order to protect himself.

Bill and I then walked back over to his gallery and I started food prep with his intern, Alex. We cut squid and other fish for chop, and Alex had already prepped the shrimp and clams before I got there. After cleaning up our space we brought all the food to the gallery and the task for the rest of the day was to feed all the animals. Some were easy to feed and some were being VERY difficult. In the first tank, we target fed certain fish by attaching the bits of food to the end of a pole and bringing the food right to the specific fish we wanted to feed.  We did this with anemones too. Then we threw in individual pieces of chop and whoever was the hungriest would scoop it up. In another tank we were feeding skates and halibut. There was one halibut that stayed at the bottom, and one that went all crazy and fed on the top and would often miss his food because he was trying so hard. The halibut who stayed on the bottom also was super far forward so we decided to come back and feed him later.

We moved on to the octopus, and I was so excited! We splashed the water and waved clams in the water to get her to come towards us and out of her corner. When she did, we stuck her food in her suckers. She got sucked onto my hand and it felt so cool, I didn’t know if she would come off since she was so strong. There was a sign with what to do if the octopus escapes right beside the tank, and I now know that is very possible for her to maneuver around and that sign is important to make sure she stays where she needs to be.

 

We checked on these baby sharks, and had to wake them up to feed them. We woke them up by dropping a little bit of chop on their head, it was very cute. Feeding took till about 3:30, and I had a great time doing it with Alex. He was so nice to me and we worked like a team. Bill toured me around the other Galleries that housed tropical and temperate fish. He had to help fix something in the freshwater area, so I toured around the aquarium and then headed out for the day. Working in Galleries was just wonderful, and the people really made it special. I didn’t feel like I was slowing their work down by being there, and Bill and Alex were some of the nicest people I have ever met. Tomorrow I will be working in the Aquarium Medical Center, and learning about what a normal day to them looks like.

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!

I drove to Kim Malkoski’s house as she is hosting me for a couple of days at her workplace, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). We left at 6:50am to get to WHOI and to get situated for an 8am small boat training course. I will be taking this course for the next 2 days and will learn how to drive, dock, and trailer two different boats. I have minimal boat experience, and have never felt completely comfortable being in charge of docking so I am excited for this course as it will make me feel more confident. We started with some lessons in the classroom. This went over leaving the dock, basic turns, and re-docking. We then all went down to the boats and went over how to start the boat and what to always check in order to be safe. The boats we were using were an Inlander Response and and a Carolina Skiff. We started by maneuvering the boat out of the dock slip. We turned the wheel all the way towards the dock and went forward so that the stern swung out. Then we flipped it in reverse and slightly straightened the wheel to kick the whole vessel to the side. It was all about pivot points and how they change based on forward or reverse motions. It took me a few tries but I got it. We then went out and practiced just driving and turning the boat  so we all got a feel for it. Since we had six people on each boat there was a lot of time watching others which helped me a lot with the harder maneuvers as I could observe what others were doing right and wrong before I did it. We then practiced approaching on a boat that was already moving. This would be utilized when weather conditions made the sea choppy. By both boats continuing forward together, they match up with the waves and it makes it easier to pass gear or people between boats. I did this one well and was super proud of myself! After a lunch break we expanded on our previous skills by approaching a boat straight on, doing a power turn, and then coming up beside it while the boat was moving. This one made me nervous because I really didn’t want to hit the other boat. My dads one piece of advice for me doing this course was “don’t hit another boat and you will be fine.” I ended up not hitting the other boat and actually doing the skill decently! After that long day, Kim and I got some pizza and watched the new season of Stranger Things. When we got back to her house I was over the moon happy because she had Boursin cheese and crackers and that is my current favorite snack.

The next day we continued with some classroom lessons and then got back in the boats. We reviewed skills from the day prior and got comfortable, and then started docking maneuvers. I ended up not backing into a slip since I didn’t feel confident that I wouldn’t hit the boat into the dock and it was a pretty busy area ahead of the dock and I didn’t want to get in the way of other boats. I was able to dock onto the side of the pier area with the wind pushing us towards it though which made me happy. We finished the course by driving a truck with a trailer on it and doing a three point turn. This truck was BIG. I did it eventually, but definitely had help from Kim and other people on the dock. Overall, I had a great time taking this course and it made me feel more comfortable operating small boats. I will practice and hopefully get fully comfortable operating soon! While at the Malkoski’s, I got to try on my new drysuit that was gifted by Fourth Element to the intern. It is quite beautiful and I am excited to use it later in the summer. Thank you Fourth Element!!

 

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!

Holly and I had a great weekend exploring and getting some much needed rest! Holly has Saturday and Sunday off from the aquarium. Saturday morning we started the day with a nice hike to Loch Raven Reservoir. It was great to get outside and start the day with some exercise. We then did a ton of errands, including going to the grocery store to get extra ingredients for a pasta dish I was making for dinner. We went to a little market where fresh fruits and vegetables were being sold, and they were so good!

 Holly took me to Pure Ocean for lunch where we had a pretzel with crab and cheese on it for lunch. I had never had a meal like this before, but I loved it. We had some down time to read after the errands, and then I made the pasta dish and Holly made a salad to go with it. They were both great and we ate them while watching Mission Impossible. I didn’t fall asleep watching the movie this time!

On Sunday, Holly went to the gym in the morning and I went on a run which kind of turned into a walk. I tried. The previous day, while doing errands, I saw a sign for a massive flea market, so we decided to go. We visited every little vendor and I ended up getting a necklace and Holly got a book. It was so hot, so we then went to her friend’s house and hung out by the pool for the rest of the day. The relaxation was great, and really rejuvenated both of us for the week ahead. 

Today I completed my DAN First Aid for Divers training. Got up at 5:45am again, and headed to the aquarium. Holly had to help organize volunteers and do other work, so I helped Allison and Josh (who were teaching the First Aid class) to set up. The class started at 8:30am and ended around 2:30pm. We had all completed online modules which gave us an understanding of the materials, and then the classroom session reviewed all of that with the opportunity for questions, plus hands on demonstrations of the skills. 

I  practiced CPR and rescue breaths on a mannequin with my CPR mask that they provided me. I also assembled and disassembled an oxygen cylinder, along with tying a tourniquet, using an epipen, and an AED. These skills were very well taught, and I feel much more confident that I could be useful in aiding someone if an emergency situation arose.

Holly and I made a great dinner from leftovers and watched a James Bond movie afterwards. I did fall asleep for most of the movie on accident, but hopefully tomorrow night I’ll be able to stay up!

Holly dropped me off at the Animal Care and Rehabilitation Center (ACRC) at around 7am today! She had interviews to do to fill a job on her team, so I worked at ACRC all morning. This part of the ACRC is run by all women, and they were very nice to let me shadow and help with their work for the morning. Right as I got there, the team was working on loading up different types of fish for a habitat at the main aquarium. I helped by tallying how many of each fish were being transported, and totaled over 200 killifish! They then pumped oxygen into the water and air surrounding the fish, and sealed them up for the quick transport to the aquarium. I got to ride in the truck to transport those, and then headed back to the ACRC. Meredith, a senior aquarist, showed me around the facility and we went to all of the tanks and wrote down their temperature and made sure everything was functioning properly. In some of the smaller tanks, there were just two fish as they were trying to breed them. We went through and made sure that there were in fact two fish in each tank, and everything checked out. We then did copper testing on some water samples. From my understanding, the water has to be between 0.18 and 0.23 for 21 days. Not going to lie, I did not catch why it was only these two tanks or what the units were for the measurements, but it was interesting to see Mer ideth test the water and use chemicals I had only used in my chemistry lab in college in real practice. I then went and followed Ashley, as she was taking turtles from their tanks and bringing them to another room to be checked out by the vet. They drew blood from each of the turtles by extending their tail and holding the turtle down but on an elevated object so it couldn’t use its legs to escape. It would take a few tries to get enough blood as the angle to draw it was very specific. After the first two turtles were cleared, we brought them back and got Bertha, the bigger turtle, and brought her to the vet. She needed her blood drawn, and an ultrasound done. The tests were a bit harder on her as she was very active and bigger, but they got them done. Ashley and I then went back to the area where the turtles were, which is the non-quarantine area, and looked at this one named Kai. He had been struck by a boat, and had a gnarly scar down his shell to show it. During that boat strike, something happened internally where he now gets a lot of gas stuck in his body. This makes it really hard for him to swim anywhere but the surface. This makes him unreleasable because if he only could swim at the surface he would be subject to much more predators. In order to help increase his quality of life, they are trying to engineer a weighted prosthetic that could help make him more mobile. 

And to end my time at the ACRC, Katie and I fed the two stingray! The stingrays are normally in the Atlantic Coral Reef Habitat at the main aquarium. However, they could only be fed by hand by divers, and during covid there were little to no divers, so they had to be transferred and haven’t been returned. Katie was explaining to me that they are trying to train the sting rays to come to the surface for their food so that they don’t rely on the divers. They are doing this in stages. First they are putting the food in little balls with holes in them that are tied to a rope and belayed to the bottom of the tank. Then, they are starting to introduce the hand feeding tool into the water so they aren’t afraid of it. Then they are slowly raising the balls of food so the stingrays get used to coming up to eat. Then, removing food from the balls but still using them as a cue that food is coming and feeding them with the hand held grabber thing. We were on the stage where the hand held grabber was in the water but food was still in the balls. We actually got the smaller ray, Garfunkel, to eat a piece of fish from the grabber tool, which was the first time she had ever done that! I had a great time at the ACRC!

The rest of the day was spent studying for my DAN First Aid course that I am taking tomorrow. I am very grateful to get the opportunity to get first aid training here at the National Aquarium, and tomorrow will be a great day full of learning. Holly and I had some yummy soup and cornbread for dinner, and rested up for Friday.

Today is my first day as a volunteer for the National Aquarium! Holly Bourbon, director of dive programs at the National Aquarium, is hosting me at her house for the next week. We woke up bright and early at 5:15am to leave for the aquarium by 5:45am. Upon arrival, I got my badge that gives me access to staff entrances and stored by dive gear in the dive locker. Holly had a contractor coming to assess a window in one of the habitats, and they did a dive around 7:45am. When I was waiting with the contractor, we established that I go to school in Santa Barbara and he grew up there, small world! We headed to the dolphin enclosure where they were doing their dive and I explored a bit. I then met Jackie, the senior assistant dive safety officer, and she took me through all the safety training for being a volunteer. I even learned how to use the compressor that they have and filled tanks. Then, Holly and I got suited up and headed to the Atlantic Coral Reef Habitat to do a checkout dive. I went over all the skills I learned in my open water course, and we did a couple laps in the habitat. It was so cool to be in the tank while the aquarium was open. I got to wave at little kids and Jackie took our picture. After we completed skills, we did one more lap and went into some of the tunnels and areas where the reef hung over. It was unlike any experience I’ve ever had! We got showered and then headed to Hollys office for lunch. Since Holly had to do work, I sat down with Jackie and we had a great talk about diving and safety, and I really appreciated her answering all my questions. She toured me around the habitats I hadn’t seen yet, and then I walked around alone and stopped at some exhibits for a while. 

The jellyfish exhibit was just beautiful, and I will spend more time there before I leave Baltimore. We ended up logging in just about a ten hour day! We got home and I fell asleep while reading a book on the couch, the long day definitely got me tired. We had the best steak and homemade mac and cheese for dinner.  I had the best first day with Holly and her husband Bill, and excited to see what the rest of the week holds!  

After the Digital Shootout, I will be heading to the National Aquarium in Baltimore! There I will be completing my DAN First Aid for Divers training. As a part of this, I have to complete online modules to be prepared for the in classroom portion of the class. With 32 chapters ahead of me, I had to take a decent amount of time on my last two days here to complete that. On Friday night, we had the much awaited competition. I felt proud of my submissions, but understood I was the least experienced photographer and still had much to learn in order to get on the podium of a photography competition one day. Russel, on the other hand, did so well in the competition! He got first in both macro categories, a second in a wide angle category, and the best in show image. It felt great to be surrounded by someone who is thriving in this industry, and I am happy that I was able to dive and learn from him this week. 

The video that Jim and Karin made where I was the subject for some shots, got second in the video category! That was super cool to be a part of. A lot of people won trips, cameras, and gift cards in the raffle at the end of the competition. My friend Bishoy won a $250 dollar gift card to ultralight in that raffle. He came up to me and told me he didn’t need anything else from their company as he already had a lot of arms and strobes and the pieces in between, and that I would get better use out of the giftcard. So, now I have money to go towards my own gear!! Thank you Bishoy! Below is the video that Jim made that I was a part of. 

V_Jim_Laurel

My time in Bonaire at the Digital Shootout was unmatched. The knowledge I gained here is priceless and I am so glad it was the first part of my internship. Now I can take these skills and apply them to all the other opportunities that arise. I am immensely grateful to everyone at Backscatter for providing me this opportunity. To Berkeley White for inviting me to the shootout and being a wonderful mentor to look up to. To Becca Boring for getting in contact with me prior to the shootout and always making sure I was set up with gear. And to James, Robin, and Thomas in the demo room for helping me switch out my lens everyday as I wanted to try something new. You are all tremendous people!

Today is the last day of shooting photos, as we have to submit all photos to the competition by early tomorrow morning. Not only is the Backscatter Shootout a great place to learn and grow with photography and diving, it is also a competition. Any photo taken by a shootout participant during the two weeks is eligible to be submitted to any of the five categories. There is macro traditional, macro unrestricted, wide angle traditional, wide angle unrestricted, and point and shoot. The traditional categories are where you have not cropped a photo, and only made general adjustments to brightness, contrast, etc. The unrestricted categories are where you are free to crop, clone, completely photoshop out divers, and edit till your heart’s content. I had quite a few macro unrestricted photos to submit (we are allowed to submit 3 per category) but I didn’t have many photos for the macro traditional category. So today I went out on the house reef for two dives in the morning and one in the afternoon with the goal of shooting at least one photo that I could submit for the macro traditional category. That meant I had to be really careful when I was shooting that the crop was exactly what I wanted, and that there was minimal backscatter in the image. With the help of other divers, I was able to locate an octopus! I was the only one down there with him so I had plenty of time to try to get a shot. However, he was pretty tucked into a rock so the composition wasn’t right. So, I headed back to the dock and stayed underneath it for a bit. Someone had mentioned that the fish underneath the dock weren’t as scared off by divers, as they were used to the commotion of boats coming in and out and divers entering and exiting the water. I came across an angelfish, and he was very cooperative and would do circles around me and the pilings. I was able to figure out my snoot angle and turn my camera so I had a vertical shot, as I couldn’t make it a vertical shot after. I was able to snag this shot and I was pretty excited about it! The background is completely black which is what I wanted, with no little speckles of backscatter. The fish is in focus, including his eye, and the crop is exactly what I wanted. 

In the afternoon, I dove with Ryan as he needed someone to hold a light in one of his shots that he was going to take near the anchor on the house reef. After dinner, we got ready for the ostracod dive! Two days after the full moon, the ostracods begin mating and can be observed by their blue luminescence that they give off when they spiral upward and mate. I decided not to bring my camera on this dive and just observe as this is a very special dive opportunity and I am not confident enough in my camera abilities to capture that yet. We got in the water about 15 minutes after the sun went down. We used dive lights to find a sandy spot on the bottom in about 20 feet of water, and then turned off the lights. Not minutes later, ostracods began popping up, but just a couple at a time. I was next to Natasha, and we were both very excited. Very suddenly, hundreds of the ostracods emerged, it was like you were looking out of a plane at night and saw all the houses twinkling below. It was a jaw dropping experience. Ebby, the dive guide, would shine his flashlight periodically to double check all divers were safe. This also made the ostracods light up even more. I am so grateful to have had this experience!