Alaskan Adventures of Mareth Griffith.
Page 2
Date: Wed, 2 May 2007
| Hello to Friends, Family, Smith People,
Theater People, Bird People and Wine Shop People, OK, I promised another email describing what I've actually been doing with my job. And the answer is, I've been doing quite a lot. I'm working for the Alaska SeaLife Center as an intern with the interpretation department, which basically means I am one of those people you run into in zoos or museums that is around for people to ask questions of. Which is a lot of what I do, and that means that I get to spend a lot of time just hanging out in the aquarium, being paid to talk to people about sea lions. Its kind of a wonderful job. The aquarium has three steller sea lions (Woody, a two thousand pound male, and Sugar and Kiska, our rather more demure 600-pound females) and nine (soon to be ten - one is pregnant) harbor seals. Plus over 70 marine birds, and a staggeringly large number of fish and 'critters'. The 'critters' is another part of my job. I run the touch tank, which means I get to spend part of my day introducing kids (and a few grown-ups) to anemones, crabs, sea urchins and starfish. Mostly it's a lot of fun. Even though the tank is only eight inches deep, it's surprising how many critters can manage to hide or camouflage themselves in there. We have crabs that I am lucky to see even once a week, and at least one fish that, five weeks into my job, I have never even seen. The aquarium department assures me he is in there. I don't think they are making it up. The water in the tank is pretty cold (about 37F) and especially with the younger kids, they won't touch something (like the anemone) unless I touch it first. Quite sensible (the anemones do look kinda weird), but it also means my hands get pretty cold by the end of the shift. And sometimes working at the touch tank basically means I'm the Starfish Police - ("Touch with two fingers. Don't pick up the starfish. Touch with two fingers. *Don't* pick up the starfish...") Especially true with school groups of a certain age. Surprisingly, some of the best kids at the touch tank are the very young ones. Any kid younger than maybe three years old just wants to grab tentacles and yank (most parents are already aware of this tendency, and don't let the kids that close.). But kids from maybe three to seven years old have no trouble with the concept that even though the sea urchins might look like underwater pincushions, they are still living things who should be treated with respect. Many grownups don't seem to understand that nearly as well. I also get to hang out with an octopus, named Victor. No, I don't get to touch him, as he has his own tank with an octopus-proof lid, but when he decides to be active he is great to watch. Octopuses can change color, and Victor often 'blinks' between red and grey. The most interesting thing about Victor is how he came to the aquarium in the first place. Most fish and critters are caught in collection dives and brought in from the ocean. Victor, on the other hand, came to us by swimming up our saltwater intake pipe, and he was living in our plumbing system for a while. Maintenance eventually found him, and he was given his own exhibit. He's a little picky about his tank environment - we build him his own rock cave, which he didn't care for and proceeded to demolish. Now he sleeps near the back of the tank, coming out occasionally to change color and impress visitors. In addition to hanging out with invertebrates, I'm also giving guided tours of the aquarium's 'backstage' areas - the research labs, the outdoor seal pools, the room-of-ten-thousand-fish salmon breeding tanks. The tours take about an hour, and it took quite a lot of work to learn all of the information about all of the different things we talk about. Most of what goes on in the SeaLife Center is not the public aquarium talks-and-presentations stuff - most of what goes on is research, which is what we try to emphasize to visitors on the tours. All of our seals and sea lions are in fact research animals - who also happen to be on display for the public. This is kind of a shock to some of our visitors, who often have a lot of interesting preconceived notions of what a research animal is supposed to look like. (Granted, both of our female sea lions have cameras and dive recorders glued to the fur on their heads - they do look weird - this is something we're hoping to use on steller sea lions in the wild to study how they forage for fish.) My tours also go through some of the public parts of the aquarium, including the underwater viewing area for the sea lion pool. If Woody (the male sea lion) is in the pool on any particular day, the tour usually derails right there. When an animal with an eyeball the size of your fist comes floating past the window, you have just lost the attention of everyone in the room. The best thing to do is just stop and let everyone just take it in. Woody, Sugar and Kiska are pretty people-savvy, after nine years in an aquarium. They like looking at babies and small children, and will often play with them a little from their side of the glass. I don't know if this is part of their predatory makeup coming into play - pick out the young from the herd - but it is great to see them playing with some of the kids who come by. Run of the mill gawking adults seem to get the least attention - probably the sea lions have just seen too darn many. |