AH! Only 10 days left!

Woah this summer has flown by. As always when I'm leaving somewhere I'm half sad and half happy. I can't believe I've been in wonderful Vancouver for 3 months and that I'll be going home in 10 days and not feeding otters and kissing whales daily. I feel like I should have crammed way more stuff into my time here (even though my first whole month was already so surreal)! At the same time I'm so excited to see everyone at home and am freaking out about only having one week in Omaha and feeling like I should have left a week earlier for more time there.



So obviously, I'm a little torn. But honestly I think this is the perfect time for me to leave, I'm definitely ready for some home-time even though I'm going to miss so many people and things here. And my last two weeks here have been and should continue to be a lot of fun, and it's always great to end on a high note.



Part of the reason the last couple weeks are fun instead of a countdown is getting to visit other departments! We're doing 4 'exchanges' in our last two weeks: Stellars, MMR, Open water and team switch. Translation: we have a research team that trains and uses stellar sea lions and Northern fur seals to try and determine why wild populations have taken a sudden dive. Part of this team is located in the 'back' of the aquarium, and this is our day with the 'Stellars'. The other part of the work is done at 'open water', which is just that- a site at Reed Point Marina where 5 trained stellars are released into the open ocean for dives etc. to help collect important data/participate in scientific trials. MMR is Marine Mammal Rescue, which is an off site aquarium-owned rehab center for injured wild animals (mostly Harbour seal pups) with re-release intention for all animals. And finally 'team switch' just means that I'll spend a day with Dolphin/Seal team and their interns (Sheri and Jenny) will spend a day with the Beluga/otter team!

Open water and Stellar day were SO fun. We basically hung out with sea lions all day and got great pictures with them. It was really cool to work with animals on land, something that I had never done at the aquarium, especially such huge animals- a couple are over 200 kilos! I hugged the same sea lion, Yasha, that Jennifer Aniston has hugged. In summation I loved it and had a great two days.

And in other news I got my bridge today!!! with only 10 days left...but still. This is really dorkily exciting for me because I didn't think I was going to be at the point where I got one this summer. A bridge is a whistle that you blow to terminate a behavior and let an animal know they've performed a behavior correctly. Up to this point I've been using a 'tap bridge' which means I tap the whale twice in row to let it know it's done something right. Obviously this limits what you can do with your animal because it has to be within arms reach to tap. So basically you need a bridge to train and getting one is pretty great!

More later if I think of anything, see you all in 10 days!

and as always there is an endless supply of pictures, which can be found at:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019061&id=1322040101&l=1e635f40db