Communing with Fishes- Day 1

Why, hello there.

My first day at the Aquarium was, in a word, scrumtrilescent.

I received my (super legit) aquarium badge that says, "Emily Flynn Intern: Fishes- Wet Lab." Chills. I get a set of keys (the power!) and access to all the behind the scenes labs, feedings, and tanks, which makes me feel like running around to all the tanks and playing with the aminals. Aminals.

I have two areas I work- "the Swamp", a little computer station/wet lab area on the 5th floor of the main building (no elevators!), and the Wet Lab, which is behind the Imax theater. In the wet lab, where I can play music and got the okay to sing along to the songs from my boss, Dave, there are jelly tanks, baby jellies ("polyps", in the lingo), dogsharks, and sea urchins. I am more or less their glorified housekeeper: I feed them, siphon out their tanks, clean up after their mess, and sing along to 90s music. Like all good housekeepers.

Suspended between the front wall of the lab and the hallway is a pretty sweet jelly tank that someone decorated for Halloween with fake bloody handprints. The jellies, I'm sure, appreciate it.

  

                                                           

Pacific Sea Nettles swimming in a tank in the Wet Lab

This is NOT the same tank that my boss, Dave, told me to stick my hand in and get stung so I would "get used to it." Um... no thank you. But that wasn't really an option because a) I want the internship and b) Dave was watching and waiting for me to stick my hand into the jellyfish tank. Is this like that Eddie Izzard sketch Cake or Death? 'Cause I choose cake.

Dave says he gets stung a lot- cleaning tanks, feeding, moving them, etc. During my first day, in addition to the stings, I got sprayed with protein skimmed from the filters, was poked by urchins, battled crabs in an fight to clean filters in the tide pool (I fear being pinched. It REALLY hurts.) I carried some dead fish, defrosted shrimp to feed the seahorses, searched through starfish to rescue the sick ones, and played with a few baby flounder. I may have also forgotten to dump out a bucket of dead animals that I collected from the tide pool, and then it ended up hanging out at the tide pool all day long. Not a great equation: Dead animal, very little sea water, and out in the air for 8 hours. Whoops. I'm sure the trainers and kids loved that one. My b- it was my first day. And maybe the kids needed to learn some facts about life and death.You're welcome.

The aquarium is fun because I have a very interesting sense of direction. It's interesting in the way that, most of the time, I don't have one. The best part about having a bad sense of directions is that I am constantly surprised by what I see when I open a door, turn down a hallway, or walk up a stairwell. I love discovery.

However, the aquarium is large. Very large. For a young intern with a poor directional intuition, I was a goner. My boss, Dave, brought me around the entire facility throughout the day and would stand in front of doors asking me if I knew where they went. If it was a gameshow, I wouldn't have done too well, but I did get a little better throughout the day. (There's hope, ma!)

Dave: Where does this door lead? (standing in front of a 3rd floor stairwell)
Emily: Um... (note* I have no idea) The temperate water gallery?
Dave: No, the cold water labs!

And we'd laugh and laugh and laugh. (And later on when he called me to tell me he was in the cold water labs, I would try to get back there, and the stairwells would move like in Harry Potter and suddenly the 3rd floor stairwell would lead to the Rescue and Rehabilitation center. It was a long day.)

All in all, I went home smelling like ocean water and low tide, which I view as a plus. And I only witnessed the death of one seahorse (the autopsy report showed that he had a bad liver. Sad.) And as for tomorrow, Communing with the Fishes-Day 2, there will be no carcasses left behind! (But I can't guarantee navigating to the Tide Pool area successfully without a little help from Dave.)