Marine Mammal Training Intern - Baltimore Aquarium

Well, you can clearly see I'm not in Greenville anymore! I'm actually now in Baltimore, Maryland, where I will be living for the next three weeks as I intern at the National Aquarium with the marine mammal training department. Today I had my first day on the job, and it was a little overwhelming! Since I have previous experience working with animals, I kind of forgot what it is like to start over at a completely new place with new people and animals, so there was a lot of information thrown at me today and I was trying to keep track of everyone's names (trainers and dolphins!) and what exactly is expected of me on the job.

When I arrived this morning, I was met by my mentor, Kimmy, who is one of the dolphin trainers at the aquarium. We spent most of the morning going over basics: she gave me my uniform, taught me how to clock in and out, went over safety instructions, introduced me to the dolphins, and went over basic protocols. Before I knew it, it was lunch time, and then it was back to work for me! I learned how to clean buckets and toys in the afternoon. The National Aquarium has really strict cleaning protocols for everything; it has to be rinsed, scrubbed with dish soap, rinsed again, soaked in a disinfecting chemical, left alone for 5 minutes, rinsed again, and then hung to dry. This applies to food buckets, toys, the entire kitchen, the floor, the deck by the tank, basically anything that may come in contact with the dolphins or any of their food. I appreciate the strict standards the aquarium upholds, but I was definitely overwhelmed by all  of the information at first.

I also had a lot of reading to do today. I read information about the founding of the aquarium, information about the keepers and dolphins, and then basic aquarium protocol like uniform and jewelry policies and all that fun stuff. It definitely wasn't the most interesting read, but I survived and have a lot of new information now!

The coolest thing I got to do during the day was rub one of the dolphin's backs during a training session! I'm looking forward to some more dolphin interaction as the days pass by, and I'm really hoping to learn a lot from this internship and enjoy my three weeks with the aquarium!