My First Day at Work

Well, it is not really _work_ as I am not getting paid, but this is my first time in the fire as a volunteer at the North Carolina Aquarium. The position I really wanted is to assist the aquariologists but they want me to put in 50 hours of volunteer labor before I start that. One reason they give is that they want me to learn the front of the aquarium before I move to the back. I think it is because they need volunteer educators. I guess one of the aquariologists' helpers main duties is cutting up fish to feed to the resident animals.

I have also volunteered for the horticulture and operations departments. The horticulture department manages the trees and other plants on the grounds that are native to the area. There is a wooden walkway outside for the guests to use. The operations department handles the nuts and bolts of the aquarium. I am not sure what my duties would be in that department, but I can push a broom and swing a hammer. I will be introduced to the Volunteer Coordinators for these departments in the near future.

Today I worked (that word again!) at three stations, the Touch Tank, the Sea Turtle, and the Albino Alligator. The Touch Tank is a raised, shallow tank with a sandy bottom and some faux rocks. It is divided into two sections, the "deep" and "shallow" ends. The shallow end has the most fragile critters -- sea anemone (Where Nemo lives!), sea urchins, and sea stars (they used to be called star fish.) I hold them so people can touch them. The deep end has horseshoe crabs, a spider crab, a spiny lobster (no big claw), and a sting ray. (The sting has been barbed so it is harmless.) The volunteers can flip a horseshoe crab over to show the feet, gills, mouth, etc. When I was young I lived on Long Island and saw a lot of horseshoe crabs. I was afraid of them. I thought that I could be bitten or stung, but they are harmless to humans. Their blood is blue and has a protein that is used to check for infectious agents (bacteria, etc.) in vaccines.

I work an hour at each station. By the end of an hour at the touch tank, my right hand is all shriveled up!

The Sea Turtle exhibit is a no touch exhibit. There is a booth, kind of like a barker at a carnival, and the counter contains a tank which holds a sea turtle. The aquarium has three turtles and they rotate which one is in the exhibit. The turtles are about a foot long and almost a year old. They were rescued as hatchlings from beaches in the area by trained volunteers. In a few months they will be big enough and will be released in the Sargasso Sea (mid Atlantic) Someday (if they are females) they will show up on these beaches and lay their own eggs. They are named A, B, and C. We don't want to become attached to them.

Since sea turtles are an endangered specie, the aquarium has to have a federal permit to keep them. Just being an aquarium isn't enough. One of the big killers of turtles is beach condos. The hatchlings follow the light of the full moon - or its reflection on the water - to find the ocean. If there are brightly-lit condos in the area, the hatchlings could go the wrong way!

The aquarium owns an true albino alligator. It was purchased from an alligator farm in Florida which got the eggs from someone in LA. There was a particular nest that had the eggs. The mom and dad both carried the recessive albino trait. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the nest, and no one knows if the mom and pop gators are still around or, if so, where they now nest. The alligator is now about 5 feet long and has its own heated pool. It is not with the other alligators we have as it is much smaller than they and it might get picked on. It gets fed beef, chicken, fish and a alligator biscuit. The biscuit has vitamin and mineral supplements. In addition to answering questions (5 years old, will get to be 12 feet long, will not outgrow its display area, etc.) I hand out stickers to the children.

I have also volunteered to help the horticulture and operations departments. There are many regional plants on the grounds and a board-walk-like path. Operations takes care of the physical plant of the aquarium. I will get informal interviews with these folks in the next couple of weeks.

The aquarium is about an hour's drive from home. It is on a spit of land that is a state park. If you look up Fort Fisher Aquarium North Carolina, in a map web page or Google Earth, you will get an idea of where it is. The area has civil war significance as well, but I have not investigated that.

More later......