The following posting is from Kirsten Cavany, an intern with the Education group at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Kirsten is in her third year at the University of New England, with a double major of Aquaculture and Aquatic Science, and Secondary Education with a concentration in Biology.

Have you ever wondered about the things that happen behind the scenes at an aquarium? Like who takes care of the fish and where do the fish even come from. Well, I had the opportunity to get down and dirty with two aquarists who work at the New England Aquarium in Boston for the day.

My day started when I met with Jeremy who gave me a little tour of the cold marine gallery. This gallery had lots of cool fish, lobsters, and other creatures that were on display and in holding tanks waiting to go on display.

This is what an aquarist sees on a daily basis. On the left are the display tanks and on the right are the holding tanks.

The first thing we did was check-in. We walked through the gallery and looked in all of the tanks checking for major problems such as a pump overflowing or not pumping enough, dead organisms, leaks, flooding, and so on. Then, I met up with Mike, and we looked at the display tanks from the visitor side to look at the animals and check for any changes in behavior or signs of disease and make sure that the filtration was working properly. If there were any problems, Mike wrote them down to be taken care of later on that day. After we were out front, we went back to the gallery to do a thorough check of the animals in the holding tanks.

This is just one of the many filtration systems that are set up in this gallery. These help to keep the water clean and the fish healthy.

Mike is looking in this tank to see if the animals are behaving normally and checking to make sure that the filter is functioning properly.

Now the real work started as they got me washing the display tank windows. After those were clean, I got to meet up with a volunteer named Katie, who I spent the remainder of my day with. We spent the next few hours cutting up different things for the animals to eat including silversides, rainbow smelt, shrimp, and even squid!!! The food prep wasn’t a bad experience either. It was actually a lot of fun because I got to talk with some of the other volunteers and workers and got to play with dead fish all at the same time.

Yum!!!!! How appetizing…for the fish. These are some of the fish I cut up during food prep.

The next thing that we did was feed the animals!!! It was really neat to see how Katie improvised to get the fish to eat. With some fish, we just dropped the chopped-up food in the tank and the fish would come right up and eat it, but with others we had to make the fish think that it was capturing its prey live. To do this, we would put a whole fish or shrimp on a stick and dangle it in front of the hungry animal. We did this with the lobsters, goosefish, and a sea raven.

There was one animal that was unlike any of the others because it would reach up to the surface and grab its food. His name is Georgie and he is an octopus. Besides feeding Georgie, I got to pet and play with him. He was really slimy and very strong. Once his suckers had attached to me, I had a hard time trying to get him off of my arm. There was always a little bit of panic in the back of my mind, but it was one of the most mind blowing opportunities that I have ever had the chance to be a part of. This is why Katie volunteers here–for the personal connection with the animals.

This lobster has a hold of the shrimp and the stick we used to feed him with.

This is Georgie, the octopus. He was really playful once he was awake!

This is Georgie with me. Once he had his tentacles wrapped around my hand it was hard to get back!

So, I learned that an aquarist not only cares for the animals on a daily basis and knows a lot about filtration systems and diseases that affect these animals, but they also help out on the conservation side. Jeremy showed me some baby Plymouth Red-Bellied Turtles. These turtles are found only in southeastern Massachusetts and are endangered, so the aquarium is growing these turtles out until the spring when they will be released and have a better chance to survive.

I really enjoyed my day at the aquarium learning all about what an aquarist does. It was a fun trip, and I learned a lot from Mike, Jeremy, and Katie, not to mention those animals that I worked with all day.