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!