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!