My experiences as a volunteer at the New York Aquarium
This week I met one of the long-term volunteers that also volunteers on Wednesdays! I love getting to speak with other people who are interested in the field and making their way towards their goals in different ways. Since there were three of us, two volunteers and an intern, I began my day in the behavioral team’s kitchen doing food prep. The food for the cow-nose rays is always at the top of the list for Wednesdays so that’s the meal I prepared this time. Eight pounds of only male capelin! It took me literally the whole prep time to get it all together so that by the time I was done everyone was working on what they call “broadcast”. Broadcast means a variety of food that gets put out all together instead of specific food being fed to a specific animal. It was during that time that I learned I may like preparing the capelin, but cutting herring when it’s not as frozen anymore is a different story. Insert my gagging here.
After food prep, I rushed over to see a follow up check up on two other animals and a tube feeding. Since I used to work in the NICU as a nurse and did tube feedings for the newborns all the time, I was super curious to see what a tube feeding on a fish would be like. This also meant I got to see another dive. None of it disappointed. I did some scrubbing around one of the holding pools and then the other volunteer showed me two sharks I hadn’t gotten the chance to see before, two male sand tiger sharks just as beautiful as can be. Then we headed back to the main building to take a nice little break.
Lunch time came and I typically go to their onsite café for food. Pretty good options and employees, including volunteers, get a 50% discount! As if we needed more upsides to spending our time here. After lunch it was feeding time again for many of the animals. I really wanted to see the feeding of the cow-nose rays, but I also didn’t want to overcrowd because they’re pretty popular and the other volunteer was getting to feed them. The cow-nose rays are the first animals volunteers are typically allowed to feed followed by some of the sharks located in the holding pools. I literally can not wait until my time comes for that! So, I spent my time watching the smooth hounds being fed again. I love these guys. As I mentioned before, they literally jump for joy at their food. They have SO much personality! They’re also all named after dogs. We’ve got Charlie (All Dogs Go to Heaven), Doug (Up), Courage (Courage the Cowardly Dog), and Snoopy (Charlie Brown, of course). So cute right? Makes you just want to hug and squeeze them! For those of you that don’t know, smooth hounds are a type of smaller shark. They can get up to about 3-5ft, but the ones we have are probably only about a two feet.
I would say the next part of the day that stood out was the feeding of the only seahorse in the exhibit. I’m told all the time by the keepers that seahorses are extremely finicky animals and they’re amazed by anyone that keeps them domestically and is actually successful. Most of the issue is around feeding and digestion so I was not very surprised by an uneventful feeding, but I’m rooting for her! Seahorses used to be one of my favorite sea animals, I mean what child doesn’t love them? The more I stood there and looked at her though the more I began questioning how such an animal makes sense in the first place. They just have such an alluring oddness about them that reminds me so much of one of my cats. I have no idea what goes on in her head either and we could spend a full hour just staring at each other as I try to figure it out. Other feedings I saw were the wobbegongs and leopard sharks again. Then I wrapped up the day at a touch pool I had yet to see and learned a little bit more about filtration from one of the keepers. The touch pool was full of a couple of adult and a bunch of baby chain catsharks. I can’t believe people get to spend every day at the aquarium dealing with such characters for a living! Even more so, I can’t believe I get a glimpse of it every week!
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