Hey everyone, sorry for my long updating absence, it has been a really busy second week. I’m still working from 7am to 3 every day in fish house, but have been doing a lot more outside as well. My day goes more like this now: sorting fish and making meals for the animals from 7 to 9:30, going up with the trainers to do something with Belugas (today we helped set up a dive to clean the exhibit). 10-11 we clean a lot and gut clams (because the otters won’t eat the guts), then we get to up again and go to an otter training session and then beluga training session, lunch time and then we only have an hour and a half left of cleaning and some more otters/belugas!
Between all this, we have ‘projects’ we’ve been assigned to present to the trainers at the end of the year. They’re pretty much just observatory, things the trainers would really like to know but are either unable to do it themselves because the animals recognize the trainers and therefore alter their behavior when they’re around or because they just don’t have the extra time. My project is on the behavior of the otters, one in particular Milo, tends to have a ‘pattern swim’ where he swims the exact same path over and over again (equivalent to pacing) which is a behavior the trainers really don’t want to see. So I hang out with him for about 30 minutes every day- 10 minutes before feeding, during feeding, and after feeding. I record all his behaviors so we can determine how they change in the presence of trainers, food, enrichment, audience etc. It’s pretty cool, after two days I’m already noticing a few established behavioral patterns. Basically I’ll summarize all my data and then present it to the Marine Mammal Department at the end of the summer in hopes that it will help them/future interns can continue the research if it seems promising.
Other than that nothing too out of the ordinary has happened lately. The next exciting thing to happen will probably be one of the belugas giving birth since she is due any day now. She is on 24 hour a day watch so that whenever labor starts everyone in the department (including us interns!) gets a call at home to come in and watch. I’m really excited about it since we get front row seats, I just hope it’s not at like 3am because I’m already tired enough at work in the mornings! I’ll be sure to take a ton of pictures of the baby when that happens and post them for everyone.
Vancouver is still as great as ever- very hot for the city this week, it’s been in the 80s every day. Since there’s no humidity here it’s been absolutely perfect weather for me. I sat outside and read at Coal Harbor (10 minutes from my apt.) for hours this week. It’s also been more fun because I’ve discovered the 19-25 crowd at the aquarium to hang out with! It’s one of the whale’s 1st birthday next week so the trainers will throw a big party then, which should be great. Last but not least I love where I live! The cats are amazing and really friendly and the place is in a great location and very well furnished and beautiful.
That’s pretty much everything I can think of, I have tomorrow off so I will probably give some of you a buzz to catch up! Oh, and I posted some pictures of my sublet and the cats if you want to see where I’m living:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015198&id=1322040101&l=7b7399e4a9
(I hope that was enough distraction from work for one day Di-Di)
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