Aquarium - Day Ten

Well, I certainly had a big surprise today at the aquarium. I busted my butt all morning doing all of the AM tasks and preparing fish and cleaning buckets. I had to work super hard and super fast because it was memorial day weekend and the aquarium was extremely busy. There was a dolphin encounter session early in the morning, so all of the trainers were busy with that, so it was my job to get done all of the typical morning tasks. I was exhausted after only like 3 hours of work, and I just happened to glance out at the audience as I was walking around, and I saw my mom and my sister randomly standing there! I was completely shocked to see them standing there and ran out to talk to them.

It turns out my whole family drove down to Baltimore for the day to see me at the aquarium! It was a really nice surprise and I ended up having lunch with them and they watched some of the training sessions and one of the enrichment sessions I ran! During that enrichment session, I decided to use ice at the windows and we picked some volunteers from the audience to help us throw ice at the windows and make designs on the windows. It was a lot of fun and the session actually went really well because all of the dolphins were engaged and interested in what we were doing!

I also got to do a few more observations on Bayley for my research project, which was really great since there were so many people in the audience. I actually started working on the project this weekend, so it will be interesting to see what my final results are at the end of the week!

This weekend I also have to work on a training plan to train a trainer. I have to be able to train a trainer to do something as if they were a dolphin, meaning I can't use words or manipulations to show them what I'm talking about. I plan to teach the trainer how to bump a volleyball back to me, which should be interesting without using words! It's definitely going to be an interesting project, and I'll keep you posted on how I do!

Next week is my last week of this internship. It's been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. I'm excited to see how this last week goes! 

Aquarium - Day Nine

It really is a shame that this is only a three week internship because I finally feel like I am comfortable at the aquarium. I know what is expected of me, I know how to do most of the jobs now, I have a much better understanding of the training sessions and what goes on during them, I know the dolphins and information about them, and as of today, I can officially enrich the dolphins on my own! It's been exciting to finally feel like I get what's going on now and that I can be more helpful to the trainers.

Today was a really busy day. I started out my morning like always, by doing a lot of cleaning. I then talked with Kimmy all about enrichment, which is basically a way to stimulate the dolphin's mind and keep their environment interesting and changing. It's also a way to encourage natural behaviors, good socialization, and playfulness. I learned all about the types of enrichment that they do in the aquarium, the safety that surrounds it, and about the things I can do to help enrich the dolphins.  I actually ended up participating in 3 different enrichment sessions today, which were a lot of fun. We threw jello from the roof into the pools for the dolphins, we played sound and showed them mirrors at the windows, and we even celebrated a birthday today! Jade turned 16 today, so we made her a birthday card and then had all of the kids in the audience sign it. Afterwards, we showed the card and many other birthday signs to the dolphins! It was a lot of fun participating in these sessions. I also enjoy actually being put into the schedule now and knowing that there is a place I have to be, a time I have to be there, and a job I have to do.

My days are starting to go by a lot more quickly, and I think that's because I can do so much more now that I have more ways to fill my time. I also am able to do things like fish prep and kitchen cleans a lot more quickly now, which also helps!

The best part of my day was yet again getting to participate in a mock encounter. As I explained in my last post, one of the newer trainers is learning how to give encounter sessions, which is where guests pay extra to come and have some personal time with the dolphins. Since she is still learning, I get to be her guest that gets to rub the dolphin and play with them! This time we worked with Jade (the birthday girl!) and it was a lot of fun!

My research on Bayley is also going pretty well and I'm hoping that I will soon start to see some clear trends developing. So far I have 9 data sets, which is a decent start, and I'm hoping I will be able to collect even more tomorrow and at the beginning of next week. Bayley is a lot of fun to watch and I have a theory that she knows that I am studying her because every time I go down for observations she spends at least 30 seconds at the window in front of me just staring at me! She's so adorable and I love her playful personality.

Tomorrow is day 10 of my internship and the end of two weeks. After tomorrow I will only have one more week left, which is crazy considering I feel like I just started! I think next week will be the best one yet, and I'm hopeful that I will continue to learn and enjoy my internship experience! Thanks for reading!

Aquarium - Days Seven and Eight

I had to combine my two days into one post because time is just flying by and I feel like I'm always busy trying to finish work or busy at my actual work at the aquarium! Anyway, these past two days have also been great ones. Yesterday I got to learn some Sd's which are the hand signals the trainers give the dolphins to ask for a behavior. I also got to learn more about husbandry behaviors, which are behaviors used for medical purposes. The dolphins are trained to do layouts to have their bodies checked, they can give fecal and gastric samples, give blood samples, and even breath samples, plus many more husbandry behaviors! It was interesting to learn about the behaviors and the different things the dolphins are trained to do. I also learned how to take respirations, which is another one of the AM tasks. Basically, you count how many times the dolphins breathe in a 5 minute period and record it. This is just to make sure that everything is normal and no one is acting unusually. This may seem easy, but when all 6 girls are in the same pool it can get quite difficult to keep track of who is breathing!

Today was actually my best day so far! I got to shadow one of the trainers in the amphitheater during her narration of the training session and listen to some commonly asked questions and even give out some answers myself. I like to talk and interact with people, so this was a lot of fun for me and also very interesting. A lot of the questions are "what time is the next session?" but a lot of other people are interested in the dolphins themselves and their pools and some characteristics of dolphins. The best part of my day was when I got to help out with a mock-encounter session. An encounter session is a service the aquarium offers where you can pay extra and come have some private time to meet the dolphins! One of the newer trainers is practicing her encounters, so I got to be her pretend audience! We laid by the side of the pool with Foster, one of the male dolphins. She asked him for certain behaviors and I got to listen to her talk and give Foster lots of rubs on his back and belly! I was really glad that they gave me this opportunity and it was definitely the most fun thing I have done so far!

Of course the day wasn't all fun, there was a lot of work too. We had a shipment of squid come in this morning so I stood in the -9 degree Fahrenheit freezer for a while helping to unload the squid. That was definitely a cold experience. I also helped out with cleaning, as always, and practiced some more gating. I was also able to get a few more observations in on Bayley these past two days. So far I haven't really found any correlation, but I only have a few data points so it's still too early to tell anything for sure.

Tomorrow looks like it's going to be another busy day since I am learning all about enrichment for the dolphins! Stay tuned for more posts about my aquarium internship and all of the great experiences I am having!

Aquarium - Day Six

After a nice relaxing two days home with my family spent catching up on some reading and celebrating my mom's birthday it was time for me to return to Baltimore and the aquarium. When I came in today I felt so much better about everything. I was able to get to work right away working on the AM tasks which include cleaning the deck, cleaning the rails, cleaning center deck, placing toy bins, filling buckets and tubes, and all kinds of other preparation and cleaning tasks. I also got to help with a few more gating sessions this morning, which makes me feel like I am actually being of help to the trainers and not just solely helping with cleaning.

I also got to start my project today. A part of the internship requirement is that you conduct a research project for the aquarium and then present your findings on your last day. I decided to do an observational study on Bayley, who is the youngest dolphin in the aquarium. I am doing a window avoidance study to see if the size of the crowd in the amphitheater affects the amount of times Bayley swims past the observation windows. My hypothesis is that the larger the crowd the fewer times she will swim past the windows, but I have to see what results my research produces! I'm actually really excited about the project especially because it's another way for me to productively fill my time and be of help to the trainers. With the information from my study they may be able to work on training certain behaviors with Bayley or they may be able to use the information to control crowd size or manage stress in the dolphins. I'll be taking multiple 10-minute observational studies a day for the remainder of my internship in order to present the results at the end and share my findings with the trainers! I even made up a project proposal plan and a data collection sheet to use.

I was really happy at the end of the day today because when I was leaving Kimmy stopped me and told me how hard I was working and how whenever she looked up I was also working and helping out with something. It was really nice to hear this and to be recognized for the improvements I've been making throughout my time here! I thanked her for her help and guidance profusely!

Things are getting crazy now because I have a lot of outside work for the aquarium on top of a summer literature course that I am trying to stay on top of. These three weeks are going to be some of the busiest weeks, but hopefully productive and fun weeks as well!

Aquarium - Day Five

I'll be honest, by the end of this first week I was beyond exhausted and so ready for my weekend. I felt like a million different pieces of information had been thrown in my direction and I was so worried about making a good impression and showing the trainers that I could and would do a good job that by the end of the week I was just so tired. However, things did go really well today and at the end of the work day I felt pretty confident in my abilities as the marine mammal training intern and I was hopeful that the next week would lead to good things.

On day 5 we focused on gating, so I learned how to move the gates in the pools with and without the animals. The gates are all at least 50 pounds, so it definitely does take some practice! Kimmy wasn't there today so I spent most of my day working with Leah. We went over all of my reading information and the basics of the tasks for the day. I also helped out a lot with fish preparation and cleaning tasks including cleaning the buckets and the toys.

I'm really looking forward to next week and hopefully more good days. I looked ahead at the schedule and it seems like I will be getting a lot more experience and practice time next week as well as some more animal interaction, so I think my one bad day is out of my system and it will be a great experience from here on out!

Aquarium - Day Four

Today was leaps and bounds better than yesterday! I finally feel like I understand the flow of the day at the aquarium and I am now able to do enough tasks where I can be helpful and accomplish a lot of things in one day. I learned how to do AM/PM tasks this morning as well as help with the weekly and monthly tasks, so now I know what I can do whenever I feel as though there isn't anything else I can help with.

I also got to help with three enrichment sessions today, which were a lot of fun. In the morning we ended up playing jump rope in front of the windows for the dolphins, which they actually found really amusing! One of the dolphins, Spirit, was super into it and kept bobbing her head up and down with the jump rope. Later on in the day, I got to go up on the roof and through jello cubes down into the tank from way up above. I loved doing this because the boys were so confused during the whole thing and it was really funny to watch them try to swim around and figure out where the jello was coming from. The last enrichment of the day we used ice cubes and were throwing, rubbing, and sliding them against the windows to get the dolphins attention. I had a lot of fun with this too, and Bayley and Spirit were cracking me up because they kept trying to eat the cubes we were throwing despite there being a huge wall of glass between us!

Today there was also a lot of time to sit down with Kimmy and go over a lot of material and training basics. She took me down into the observation pit where I will be learning to take observations on the animals and conducting my research project. We also talked about training session types again and about bridging stimuli and least reinforcing scenarios. Bridging is when you do an action which lets the dolphin know that they did a good job and will receive a reward when they return to their station. A lot of times this is done with a whistle, but the trainers can also do it by pointing at the dolphin or slapping their palm against the water. Least reinforcing scenarios are what you do when you are unhappy with something a dolphin did. You don't punish them or act angry, but you also don't give them attention or a reward. Essentially, you continue doing what you were doing and don't give the dolphin any sort of response. It's interesting for me to learn more about training and different terms and situations. I feel like I've already learned a lot more about the topic and it's only day 4, so I'm excited to see all that I know by the end of this internship!

Aquarium Day 3 - The Rough Day

I'll be the first to admit that I did not have a great day today at work. There was a lot of little things that kept happening that by the end of the day just led to a lot of frustration on my part. I made a few mistakes here and there, and being the perfectionist that I am, I really let them get to me when I should have just shaken it off. However, after having some time away from the situation, I feel much better and am ready to get to work tomorrow and show everyone what I can do!

I was taught how to clean the deck this morning and how to do the rest of the daily morning chores. I struggled a little bit with cleaning the deck because I used too much water, which ended up leaking into the downstairs rooms. It wasn't a huge catastrophe or anything, but I was embarrassed when somebody came up to say something to me. The trainers all assured me that they had all made the same mistake before too and not to worry about it, but I still felt bad for causing problems, especially because I'm supposed to be there to make their lives easier, not more difficult!

For the rest of the morning I tried really hard to stay out of the way and do a good job. I found myself struggling a lot with finding things to do, because I still really don't know how to do that many tasks. Once all of the morning tasks were done, I cleaned up all of the toys and then often found myself struggling to find more work. I kept trying to clean buckets, but someone always got to them before me, and when I asked to help they said that they were fine. It was kind of stressful for me because I didn't want to feel like I was just standing around, but I also really didn't know what kinds of things I should be doing.

After lunch, luckily, one of the trainers asked if I would help her with enrichment. I know a decent amount about enrichment from being in the zoo, so I was grateful for the opportunity to help them with something I felt like I could actually do and do well. We ended up playing a bunch of different sounds for the boy dolphins at the windows and they loved it! They were dancing in the water and kept pushing their heads against the glass wanting to hear more. It was a lot of fun and we laughed a lot at their crazy reactions. I also blew bubbles over the girls water, but they weren't as into that as the boys were into the sounds. Then, she taught me how to fill in the paperwork and even let me fill it out for a few of the dolphins! I was really thankful that she let me help with that and was taking a hands on approach to teaching me, because it was something I felt like I really needed.

Later in the afternoon, I had a talk with a trainer about expectations. I think there was a big miscommunication somewhere along the line and somehow the things that I was expected to do got lost in translation. Part of it was my fault, I was always just kind of waiting to have someone tell me what to do instead of taking the initiative to look for something to do. I hadn't been down to the kitchen in a while, so she sent me down there to finish some cleaning. I left the place extra clean and even brought up a few things I anticipated that they would need so that I could prove to them and myself that I had what it took.

Finally, at the end of the day, I talked with Kimmy (my mentor) about expectations and about a project I have to do during my internship. I asked exactly what was expected of me, which cleared a lot up and made me feel better about the whole workday. We also discussed potential project ideas and what the final product should look like. Basically, I have to do behavioral observations on the dolphins and then report my findings to the trainers at the end of the internship. I'm looking forward to getting started on that and I've been brainstorming a few good project ideas!

I was completely overwhelmed by the end of the day, but now I'm feeling a lot better. I remember feeling similarly when I was first starting at the zoo, but after pushing through the initial overwhelming feelings and learning how to take initiative, I ended up loving the zoo and my job there. I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a much better day, if only for the fact that I understand so much more now and I am going in with a great attitude about the work I have to get done. I'll be posting tomorrow to let you know how it goes, so wish me luck!