The whole of 2014 I was working towards a graduate certificate in Environmental Education. Earlier in the spring I had taken Diversity of Fishes and Sharks and Rays online through Hamline University (I highly recommend the classes. I quite enjoyed both of them.) I had four more credits to earn in order to get the degree. To do that I hatched this plan to volunteer at an aquarium for a few weeks in the summer. I looked all around but most aquariums are either looking for a long term volunteer (once a week for a year) or charge ridiculous volunteer fees. Finally I found one company that had no volunteer fee and would let me work full days for a few weeks. It just so happened to be in Scotland. (Score!! I looooove Scotland.) So of course I signed up and bought my flight and packed and all that jazz.
My flight out there wasn't too bad. No turbulence except for the turbulence of the teenage lovers sitting in front of me. There was lots of annoying giggling and pretend fight flirting. I was not a fan. I got into the airport and hopped straight onto a bus headed for Oban (a tiny town on the west of Scotland) I took a few hours but I love bus travel in Scotland. So clean, so safe, so convenient. A few hours later I was dropped off in the drizzly town of Oban. (It rained ALL the time there, and we were so high up on the earth that the sun didn't go down until after 11pm. That was trippy!) The hostel I stayed at was pretty cool, there was a large group of people that were volunteering there and they were very insular and not particularly welcoming to insiders (but more about them later).
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| Typical rainy Oban day out the bus window |
The next day I got up and headed over to the Scotish Sea Life Sanctuary in Oban. I took the public bus. It was about a 20 minute ride.
The first day was mostly paperwork and sitting in the moldy office. Boo. But I did get my "official" Sea Life Center t-shirts and sweatshirt. Woo! Before I get into my routine, lets go on a quick photo tour of the sanctuary!
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| Shoaling fish ring and wolf fish |
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| Shark tank (they just had little dogfish) |
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| Seal enclosure overlooking the bay |
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| Seahorses |
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| Cuttlefish, starfish, some other fish indigenous to Scotland |
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| Where visitors could view the rescued seal pups |
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| Turtle area |
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| Otter enclosure |
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| Flatfish area |
After that, my days became pretty routine (other than the amazingness of being able to work in an aquarium, of course!!). I got up around 7, put on my smelly mens work pants, Sea Life Center shirt and sweatshirt and my steel toe wellies and clunked down to eat breakfast and then clunked down the road to the bus stop.
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| Here's me in all my outfit glory (with Boo the baby seal pup) |
When I got to the aquarium, I would be greeted by the ever present, stupid "mystical ocean" music that played constantly in the inside exhibits. I would then grab this device and set off to record water temperature, salinity, and pH levels for the tanks. Most days it was just a select few that held delicate animals (damn seahorses) but on Tuesdays it was ALL the tanks.
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| Here's me with the machine in use |
After that, it was on to feed the seals! The big girls got fed first. There are three adult seals at the sanctuary permanently. They get fed herring and mackerel fish chopped in half. All of them have health issues that mean they can't be released into the wild. Two of them receive pills inside their fish everyday for thyroid issues. At the very end of each volunteer's time, you go in to feed the adult seals. But I'll go more into that later.
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| Anna and the seals |
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| Seals with Farrah |
The only seal pup they had when I arrived was a little guy named Boo. He got fed a blended mixture of de-boned fish, electrolytes and water. Below is a vid of me debone-ing some fish for your viewing pleasure!
Originally we had to tube feed him, which isn't really pleasant for the seal. It involves a tube, heavily lubricated, shoved down his throat and then food pushed in with a pump thingy. Usually the seal has to be sat upon with a towel around its head to let this process happen.
Then I usually went to feed the seahorses. They had to be fed tiny organisms called artemia and superba FOUR times a day. High maintenance little buggers. I consider them pretty dumb creatures. They can't eat anything bigger than their tiny mouths, they have no stomach and are essentially a tube and they die at the slightest provocation. Tap on the glass? Death. Camera flash? Death. Temperature one degree too high or two low? Death. Basically you look at them sideways and they die.
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| Seahorse through the back of the tank |
After that, there was a never ending cleaning regime to handle. I de-algea-d tanks with a magnet, took out and scrubbed themeing (the rocks and plants in the tanks), siphoned tanks, swept floors, mopped, scrubbed doors and walls, wiped doorknobs and basically all the other glamorous things.
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| Siphoning in action! |
Siphoning can be less than pleasant in that you have to apply the initial suction to get the water up the tube. Sometimes you can accomplish that by shaking the siphon, other times you have to suck on the end of the tube and watch so that you dont get a mouthful of saltwater...Blech.
More to come about the Sanctuary and Scotland soon!!
