How did you measure the success of the work you did while you were an intern? What did you learn from this?
When I applied to Sea Life, the application made it very clear that they were looking for somebody who wanted to learn about marine life as well as the responsibilities and tasks of an aquarist and husbandry assistant. Based off this, I believe this internship was extremely successful and it's evident from the knowledge I'll take away and the new skills I've acquired. Going into this internship I knew very little about marine life and the different aspects of key elements in an aquarium. I had a very basic understanding of the nitrogen cycle and water quality testing because of chemistry last year, but I knew nothing close to what I needed to know in order to be successful at this job. However, keeping in mind that this was a learning experience, I was able to soak up tons of information in an enjoyable, hands on way. My first week at Sea Life was "hectic" and on our calendar it was clearly labeled the "nightmare week." They were extremely short staffed so my mentor was in charge of doing a lot but, though this week was a little chaotic, it was full of learning opportunities. Within my first day I learned how to do necropsies, feed animals, gently handle the animals, euthanize them when they're suffering, and the general way the life support systems work. Now, almost three weeks later, I know a lot about diseases, open/closed systems, animal nutrition, acclimation, the nitrogen cycle, the bacteria that causes the nitrogen cycle, different animals and their different needs, and tons of other things that I can carry long conversations about just explaining the basics about. By the end of day one I knew I was going to be learning a copious amount of information while working here, and I am still amazed by how much I've learned and will continue to learn until the end of internship. How did your project go from an idea or inspiration to a final product? I shadowed a bunch of different aquarists during the week and with each new person I talked to, we discussed a bunch of project ideas. Each person suggested something that directly connected to them and what they "specialized" in. We talked about breeding jellies, making coral fragments, and looking at diseases in sea horses but none of these were really jumping out to me. I'd get to work on them anyways so I felt like I didn't want to necessarily claim them as my own project because they weren't as independent and impactful as I would've liked my internship project to be. My mentor and I ended up discussing a few more ideas and she kept asking, "what do you like the most about the aquarium" or "what's your favorite animal here?" From here two ideas formed; fixing the garden that we use to feed our reptiles -- a task that multiple aquarists had mentioned they wanted to do but simply did not have the time to invest-- or target train our octopus to be comfortable getting in and out of a basket so they can weigh her easily. Because we enjoyed both ideas, we asked Maia if it would be okay to do the two things and with that she gave us her specific perimeters to start planning and doing research to satisfy the project requirements. From there I formed a very specific plan-- shout out to Nikolova and Courtney for making us do those tedious planners where we had to write down every step because that actually helped a lot-- and just started following the plan. What new appreciations did you develop while working as an intern? Why? Learning about the job of an aquarist has shown me a world of animal care that I really admire and didn't know existed before taking this internship. Fish to me, when I first started, were the least interesting animals to take care of, I figured running an aquarium was like throwing carnival goldfish into a bunch of tanks and not forgetting to feed them but boy was I wrong. There are so many different factors that can affect the life of a fish and, while some of them are hardier than others, a shift in pH, ammonia levels, alkalinity, salinity, nitrites, or nitrates can mean the end of a system and they have to be monitored very closely to make sure that doesn't happen. But why invest so much time? Another thing I've come to admire is the care everyone is willing to put forth for every animal at Sea Life. My mentor will laugh and joke about how easily she personifies the animals but, after spending a little time with them, you really start to see that they're not just boring chunks of meat floating around in some water. The octopus has mood swings, the fish get excited to eat when they hear keys jingle, the sharks will nip at each other and play fight when they know food is coming, Chuck the chuckwalla scratches at the door and wiggles when he sees flowers, you can clearly see that these animals are a lot more than what I thought they were, and now I can't see them any other way. Finally, the organization and structure of the aquarium is something that I find incredible. Each week that I've worked here has been completely different in terms of organization but even so, their disorganization was organized. The first week I was there, there were maybe eight people, and there needed to be four at DSA and four at Sea Life doing occasional dives, not only that but 44 tanks needed to be fed-- including the seahorses that get fed four or five times throughout the day--, food prep needed to be done, breakout for the next day's food prep, tank cleanings, an ocean tank dive from 10:30am to 12am, any necropsies-- and trust me there were lots to be done-- and anything else that came up that wasn't apart of a normal day. They went the whole week with a minimal amount of people and still managed to get everything done as if it were a normal week. Then the next week every one came back and there was too many people for a week, but still, everyone found something to do and stayed busy until the end of the day, they used their spare time to do cleanings that they normally wouldn't have time to do. I think they're amazing for being able to adapt to a schedule and still get what needs to be done, done. How might internship influence the direction of your life? This internship, as much as I love it and appreciate how much it's opened my eyes, it's made me realize that this is not the job for me. An important part of internship is getting out and trying a job before you commit to it and in this case, it confirmed my love for animals but showed me that I don't want to work with aquatic animals. I love how hands on this job is and I want to find something similar but something that really bothers me is that once an aquatic animal gets something, it's really hard to treat and help it get better. In terms of the type of work, internship has narrowed down potential careers that I was looking into pursuing previously. If I had chosen to continue down the marine biology path, this internship would've been extremely helpful in securing a job after college, lots of people at the aquarium have told me that if I want to do something with marine biology then I should do lots of internships and get a lot of experience under my belt. I'm looking forward to senior internship and I hope that I can further narrow down what I want to do before I go to college and spend lots of money.
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What am I doing for my internship project?
Good question! I'm currently working on and tossing the idea around of three different things. I'm not worried about having a final product because either way I'm going to be working on all three, it's just a matter of deciding which one I want to invest the most time on moving forward. One option would be fragging-- a process where you break a piece off of a coral and glue it onto a wooden piece so a whole new coral piece will grow-- and growing new corals with Dale so we can eventually move some into tanks in the aquarium and then give the rest to other Sea Life aquariums. Considering the time I have left here, my final product would be some fragged pieces of coral that would continue growing once I left. Another option would be to start up the jelly cart with Stephanie, where we could start the process of breeding our own moon jellies. Again, considering the amount of time I have here, after we got the cart all setup, my final product with this project would be a setup breeding cart and the beginning stages of some baby jellies (the polyp phase). My final preposition would be cleaning up their garden by holding that they use to feed all of their reptiles. This, to me, seems like it would be the most beneficial to them-- out of the three options-- because they would probably end up getting to the other two anyways but I've heard a few different people say that they wish they had time to do something with it but they just didn't have the time. Right now they have some things planted but they've become overgrown, there are a lot of weeds, and the fence around it looks like it's been run over a few times by the Sea Life golf cart. I think the final product for this would be the most fulfilling and complete. For each project I need organization skills and a lot of self motivation, these past two weeks have gone by so fast and before I know it these last two weeks are going to be gone too. Every day there's always a lot of "busy work" to be done-- and by busy work I mean shark feeds and playing with Lady the octopus, my life is so hard-- so I need to be able to manage my time efficiently so I'll be able to have spare time to work on my project. In addition to the third project seeming the most fulfilling, it's also the project I'd be the most independent with. I'd do corals with Dale and jellies with Stephanie, but nobody really has time to oversee a reptile-garden project so it would be extremely independent. However, I'd still like as much feedback about my ideas from the whole team! I want everyone to have some kind of input, especially the people who would be using it the most; Dallas, Maddy, and Jill. I'd also need to consult with Maia and Mike to make sure everything is within the right guidelines. Self-Advocacy, an important trait in any job, is especially important in this field of work. What does self-advocacy look like in an aquarium setting? With each aquarist having their own tanks and sections to take care of, it's important that everybody communicates with each other about the state and condition of each area. Similar to our library work, focusing on our own work would only be okay for a little while, then down the line we would eventually start to see issues with organization and efficiency of everything as a whole.
A good example of this is Dallas leaving a "to-do list" for her tanks because she's leaving next week for a conference. Although some people, like Maddy, already knows what she does on a daily basis, other aquarists may not-- so by leaving this list she assures that her tanks are taken care of exactly how they need to be-- even in the case of Maddy being absent. This is important because if her animals are not taken care of properly they'll get sick or die. Constantly making sure you tell everyone what you've done so far in the day is also extremely important. To make sure that everyone knows what has and hasn't been fed, we keep a whiteboard by the kitchen that has the names of the animals that require multiple feeds throughout the day or any kind of special treatment. Our seahorses, for example, have to be fed at least four times a day and because everyone chips in with the feeds, we keep a tally on the whiteboard of how many times they've been fed that day. Though there are many opportunities to advocate for yourself in our work space, the most prevalent is being able to motivate yourself and know what needs to get done. Most of the work aquarists have to do has to get done in the morning before the aquarium opens-- so that gives them four hours to do all of the vacuuming, acrylic-wiping, tank cleaning, and general maintenance for 34 tanks. It's very easy to waste time playing with the animals or space out while vacuuming a tank but in order to get things done you have to stay focused and be very aware of the time. Afternoons are generally just for feeds and we don't do a lot of maintenance. Questions about my mentor:
What should I know about you before I start working here? "I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara and got my degree in marine biology. Right out of college I lived in Hawaii for 8 months and worked on a project called the Hawksbill Turtle Recovery Project where we'd backpack to a remote beach and stay there for seven to ten days. Every morning and night we'd do beach checks and mark any nests we found and then 60 days later we'd come back and watch them hatch. This made me realize how hard those little guys really had it, as soon as they hatched the crabs would come out and try to drag them under the sand, and they were the perfect targets for animals like birds, eels, mongoose, and bigger fish. Once I came back from that I worked at the Catalina Island Marine Institute for a couple of years as a marine life instructor. For this job I'd take kids on three to five day outside adventures like snorkeling, nighttime snorkeling, and beach exploring. From there I did an internship at the AOP, Aquarium of the Pacific, where I was eventually offered a job here [at Sea Life] as a husbandry assistant." What is your job title? "So I'm an aquarist, and there are different levels of aquarists. You have your senior aquarists which are the highest level, and then below them you have your aquarists, and below that you have aquarist level twos. In order to move up you have to take a test focused on specific skills and get at least a 95% " What are your main duties and responsibilities? "I'm the primary caretaker for 12 tanks, all of which I'm in charge of feeding, cleaning their tanks, monitoring water quality, and making sure life support is functioning properly. I'm also in charge of the kitchen and food prep room. I place orders for the food, keep track of food usage, and create the individual diets for our animals. In addition to that stuff, I also run the internship program so I make all the plans for their projects and work schedules and I interview and pick you guys." Why did you choose to work here? "I was an intern at AOP and one of the aquarists there mentioned a part time position here, I applied, got the job, and it really just worked out. I've been working here for over a year now and I enjoy being able to experience working in a small aquarium because you get to experience a lot of everything; feeding, animal care, water quality, and food prep are things we all do around here, where a larger aquarium would have specialists for each thing." How did you end up doing the job you do? "I've always had a love for animals and as I got older I developed an affinity towards ocean animals and marine life. From there I did that Catalina aquarist intern work and like I said before, now I'm here." What skills and training are necessary for your position? How did you acquire these skills? Through school? On the job? "Being observant because you have to look at-- in my case-- 400+ animals every day and make small observations to make sure everybody is okay. Multitasking, being able to do lots of things at once, and having a basic understanding of chemistry and biology are good to have when thinking about a career in marine biology, as well as being able to understand water and water quality. Most aquarist jobs will require you to have a background in diving. I developed a good base of these things in school but being able to actually work with the animals has allowed me to get a lot better at them. I tried to get scuba certified in college but I had to wait until Catalina. My chemistry definitely got better as I was able to see it work out in front of me, multitasking-- I would say always gets better the more you do it, and outside of work I'm not a very observant person but I've learned to adapt to my work." Do you consider a career in this area satisfying? In what ways? "Yes! I love working with animals, it makes me super happy and it's a fun job. I like the people and doing fun things with the animals." Is there anything you wish you'd realized about the world of work when you were my age? "I wish I had known that money would be a struggle with this job. I live comfortably enough but the pay for an aquarist job is not very high, you don't get a lot of days off working with live animals, and get internships a lot earlier! You have to work a lot of unpaid jobs before you can start getting paid, my situation was just weird and extremely lucky. You're lucky that you're school lets you do this kind of stuff." Questions about the organization: What should I know about this organization before I start working here? "Its main priority is entertainment. Obviously conservation is a priority but it's not the main priority. Different aquariums will have different priorities and Merlin Entertainment's is, entertainment. They own a lot of cool things like a wax museum and some kind of a Shrek world." What is a typical work day like? "We each clock in around 7:30am and head to the office where we have a quick meeting about what we plan to do for the day, then around 8am we'll walk around and do our morning checks on our primary tanks-- make sure all of our animals look healthy, the water temperature is where it's supposed to be, and that all of our life support systems are running properly-- then we'll start cleaning tanks, vacuuming, do water changes, change filter socks, and clean protein skimmers. We'll do all of this before the aquarium opens, and then at 10:45am, right before we open, we'll dive the ocean tank and stay in there until lunch. We eat lunch and when we come back we do all of our afternoon feeds. Sometimes at 1pm we'll have a shark feed or a ray feed at 2pm, and after that we answer emails, log stuff, and end with another PM check. Even after we go home or the aquarium closes, we have someone checking on the systems 24/7." How is the organization structured? "So you have Maia the curator, who's the top dog, and she oversees all of the displays at Sea Life and DSA and then you have Alyssa (at Sea Life) and Matt (at DSA) who are senior aquarists, and then under them are all the aquarists, then husbandry assistants. Above everybody is Mike, who's the general manager and he's in charge of Maia, the cafe people, ops, and everyone in Sea Life and DSA." What is the purpose of this organization? "In total there are 10 Sea Life aquariums in the US, and there are TONS nationwide. There are at least 50, all similar to this one with the purpose of entertaining kids." What does it take to be successful in this organization? "To be successful? Like any job, hard work always gets rewarded, as well as patience and a passion for what you're doing." What other advice do you have about working here? "Just know that you're gonna get a little dirty." Questions about this career: How important is it to get along with other people in your career? "It's very important to get along, or at least tolerate your coworkers, and have good communication-- especially when you're short staffed. When you get along with everybody it's a lot easier to be flexible and to take care of everything when people are gone. Work just gets done a lot easier but it's not the end of the world if you don't like a coworker." What other personality traits, skills, or knowledge are important here? "Knowing how to be flexible is a good skill to have. Going in stride when you have a plan and then it somehow goes astray. Also, being a "team player" or someone who's able to ask if/what you need help with. For the most part, just use your brain, common sense, problem solving, and critical thinking are used a lot here." Internship reflection! So many interesting things have happened at internship so far! Something that they do here that really stands out to me is target feeding. Particularly with their sharks, target feeding is when they use tongs or a pole to feed fish directly to an animal. I love it so much because that means they have to somehow distinguish the animals, so they find small things that makes them different. The three zebra sharks, for example, are told apart by how many freckles they have on their heads and which direction they swim in. Two of them swim from the left to the right, these are the two females or Z1 and Z2, the male however, swims from right to left and he is known as Z3. To tell the two females apart, Z1 has almost no freckles or spots on the top of her head while Z2 has a bunch. Similarly, with the two white-tipped reef sharks, W1 has a clear head, while W2 has 2 white spots on the top of her head. The gray reef sharks are the same, reef shark 2 has a shredded looking dorsal fin and reef shark 1 does not. They do something similar with their reptiles as well. They have five box turtles, all named after characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and so you know which is which, their shells are marked with the corresponding initial. Every reptile has a name; the three desert tortoises are named Snap, Crackle, and Pop, the two corn snakes are Ka and Luis, our Chuckwalla's name is Chuck, our ball python is Sir Rocco. I just think it's really cute that certain animals have so much personality that they felt the need to give them names. The Workplace When I first arrived, my mentor-- Maddy-- had to come get me at the security gate and escort me through the park. As we walked through the park it was absolutely silent and completely empty, a polar opposite to how it is when it's open. We walked from the employee parking lot to the aquarium itself and it just kind of looked like the office buildings we passed while walking over. From the outside it looked like a simple, rectangular building with some oceanic murals painted on the walls, on the inside however, I soon found out that it was a hard-to-navigate, extremely confusing maze. We followed a skinny path to the back of the aquarium and then rode an elevator to the second floor of the aquarium. The elevator took us to the back of the Ocean Journey Cafe which had, what seemed like, 30 doors but really only had about three or four. From there we made the short walk to the office, dropped our stuff off in the small office, and then made our way down to the start of the aquarium to begin a general tour. While we were walking down and around, Maddy opened a bunch of doors that serve as shortcuts for the aquarists, these are known as the BOHs (Back of House) and are only allowed to be left opened while the aquarium is closed. This is important because when I was allowed to explore on my own, the aquarium opened and all of the doors that I had originally used were now closed and I had no idea where I was or where I was going. The initial tour didn't really surprise me, I was expecting an aquarium with fish and that's exactly what I got, an aquarium with fish. I wasn't expecting the tanks to be set up the way they were though, depending on where you are, there's a room that connects two or three tanks and you typically have to climb a small set of stairs to feed or work with the animals in that tank. Another area that surprised me was the "kitchen" which is where we keep the food for each individual tank and where we do food prep. The kitchen is a small room with a refrigerator, a freezer, and a big sink. This room is directly connected to five others; quarantine, the lab, the tool room, the water pipe room, and the oxygen tank room. My colleagues My colleagues are some of the coolest people I've ever met. They're all extremely nice and they're really good at what they do. Of course, it's their job to be good at what they do and I'm sure Legoland wouldn't just hire anybody but they all work really well. Each coworker of mine has a specific thing that they know a lot about and that they sort of "specialize" in. Maddy specializes in animal nutrition, Dale works closely with breeding different types of coral, Dallas is in charge of taking care of the reptiles, and Paul is the life support specialist. In addition to knowing their own things though, this week they've been extremely short staffed, so they've all had to do a little bit of everything and it seems to be effortless for them. Not only are my coworkers extremely good at everything they do, they're super big nerds as well. The morning meetings start with a brief overview of the previous night's Game of Thrones episode, some of them can go on and on about video games, and my mentor is the type of person who will casually listen to the Harry Potter audiobooks. Not only do I enjoy talking to them about hobbies and watching them do their jobs with ease, I also love seeing how happy they get when they do their own specific tasks. I enjoy watching Maddy play with the octopus, Dale working closely with his coral fragments, Paul smiling when he comes up from his dives, and Dallas holding and loving on Sir Rocco even though she's afraid of other snakes. The Job This job is incredible. It's a lot more hands on than I thought it would be and there's lots of opportunities to touch and play with the animals. My favorite part is being able to play with Lady, the aquarium's octopus, or playing with Sir Rocco, the ball python. I really love being able to see how much personality each animal has. Lady, for example, has two very different moods, sometimes she's extremely happy to see you and wants to play and do tricks, but other times she's hangry and doesn't want to be anywhere close to you. Sir Rocco, our ball python, is like a puppy and he gets super excited when you go in. Rocco, like many of the other animals, knows the sound of the keys jingling so when you walk in his head shoots up and he'll follow you around as much as he can from his display. This goes for most of the animals, the fish, sharks, and rays will swim to the surface for food, the shrimp will crawl on your hand and clean it, and even the abalone will come out from underneath their shells when they see your shadow appear above the water. Things I'm excited and worried about I'm excited about a lot of things, I'm the most excited to start my project that I've been discussing with my mentor which is breeding moon jellies. I'm also just generally excited to continue getting close with all of the animals. I spend a lot of time with Rocco and Lady but I look forward to spending more time with them and other animals that I haven't really gotten to play with yet. This week was a hands on, orientation week so I'm eager to start working next week when I'll have a little more freedom and independent time. As I get more and more comfortable with my coworkers, I'm excited to learn a ton about their specific things. Today I spent a good chunk of time with Dale talking about how disease spreads on coral and how you treat it, which was really interesting to me as it relates to what I want to do in the future. I look forward to days like this where I can learn specific information instead of general aquarium rules and tasks. I'm not really worried about too much. I would say that my biggest fear is that I won't be able to retain all the information they're throwing at me. This internship has already been super educational and I've learned so much, I don't want to accidentally forget something and I want to hold on to as much information as I can. Everybody there has been super reassuring though and they keep telling me that this is supposed to be a learning experience and that they've all made similar mistakes so even with this one worry, I'm not too stressed. Also, we have some clown fish in quarantine that aren't doing super great and I'm a little worried about them, I don't think they're gonna make it. Ask me about it if you want, they have a neat story and I love explaining it. |
Elena SeitzingerThis is my internship blog. ArchivesCategories |