My experiences as a volunteer for the New York Aquarium
Captain, the zebra shark
Valentine’s Day at the Aquarium! I delay my posts, so you’re probably looking at the date in confusion. Just know that these events actually took place on February 14th and I woke up energized and feeling all the love for the animals!
With that said, I showed up ready to knock out our morning tasks like the footbaths, cutting up the carni gel, and a few other things. We had to leave a couple of tasks undone for the training of our newest intern who had started two days before. Yay, more people! While the keepers were acclimating her, the other intern and I were able to head to the food prepping early. After preparing the food for the cownoses the past two times I wanted to try my hand at some of the other diets. This time I was able to complete a nice variety! I did the meals for the wobbegongs, small sharks, a few fish for the sea change area, and my favorite little puffers, Potato and Chip. Then everyone worked together for the broadcast feed.
Once we got back to our building I began making the carni gel for the second time and I’ll admit, I smell the brownie smell less with each time. However! Cutting it up the next morning is still so satisfying. Besides, there’s also a garlic smell to it and garlic is a nice smell, right? Once that was completed I was just in time to watch the holding pool feeds that I only caught the tail end of last week. So, outside of the Ocean Wonders Exhibit there is another building that has three holding pools. One pool has an outside viewing area for visitors to see as some of the animals swim around. In this pool there is one sand tiger shark, two blunt-nose stingrays, and three sandbar sharks. The other two pools that are not accessible to the public hold the sturgeons, and the two male tiger sharks I mentioned on day three.
Currently this is one of my favorite feeds to try to catch. One because I haven’t seen it as often as the others, two because volunteers and interns can get a little more hands on after a while, and three because the blunt nose rays are hilarious. Their names are Artemis and Athena and they are major prima-donnas! They’re trained to get in a stretcher to come up to the surface to be fed, but most of the time they eat the scraps that the sandbar tigers drop and then decide coming up is too much work and if you don’t put the stretcher in just right, which of course is the part that we get to be involved in, they won’t get in for that either. They’re apparently very picky about who takes care of them so I definitely would take it personally.
This day was also the day I finally got to see the cownose feeding up close! We have 13 cownose rays and I’m not even close to being able to tell them apart or remember all their names. The ones I can remember so far are two Rachels (yes, one of them is Rachel Ray), Tsunami, Piglet, Sunny, and I think there’s a Thomas as well. The keepers are so good with them because so many of them look the exact same to me I can’t even imagine how they manage to distinguish looks and personalities and all that come with that, not only for the rays, but for all the other animals there as well. My head is spinning just thinking about it all! For now though I’m going to try to make it to as many of their feedings (there’s 4 a day) as possible so that I can one day feed them too and at the very least know I’m not feeding the same ray over and over again!
The rest of the day involved watching the feeding for the spadefish which were in a tank I didn’t even know how to get to, and probably still can’t remember. Scrubbing the gutters and the bottom of the holding pool with the sturgeons all whilst hearing “tongue scrubber, tongue scrubber, Oscar’s dad’s a tongue scrubber” play over and over in my head. Side note, if you recognize what movie that’s from you’re my kind of people. Followed by seeing Luci the Hawksbill sea turtle getting fed. If I haven’t mentioned Luci before it’s because this girl seems like she is always M.I.A and off doing her own thing. I think this was only my third time seeing her since I first started. For instance, we found her resting in the back of her exhibit that she shares with so many other fish and sharks and rays, in fact, I think this is the Hudson Canyon tank. I’m still distinguishing between all the tanks and where they are from the back versus from the visitor viewpoint, so don’t quote me. Either way, this is an extremely deep and large tank and there she was behind the exhibit display cliffs so no visitors could see her. Coincidence? I think not! So it was amazing to see her respond so well to her target and come all the way from the bottom up and over to the quarantine pool so she could eat without being disturbed. Luci has been there for decades, but apparently came to the aquarium because some anonymous person just dropped her off. I’m not sure if she was an illegal pet or caught by local fishermen, divers, or someone on land, but apparently before she got fully adjusted to her new environment she used to chase the volunteer divers who clean the exhibits around. I’ll let you take a guess what “Luci” is short for.
We completed the day by doing a broadcast feed for tank one which is the popular tunnel as you first come into the aquarium and where Captain is resting in photo above. This was my first time getting to do a feeding as opposed to just watching one! Although as I mentioned before, a broadcast feeding is tossing a variety a food in different areas and at different depths to feed the fish we can’t feed individually. Baby steps are still steps though! This broadcast feed is the mysis that gets prepared in the morning that I’ve also mentioned before, the different size krill and seamonkeys. Just imagine sitting on top of a rock as you dole out tiny pieces of seafood and all kinds of tropical fish such as blue, yellow, and unicorn tang swimming around you and coming up to you for more.
I’m telling you, the aquarium is one of the most peaceful places on earth for me. Can’t get any more romantic than that!
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