Life Inside the Fishbowl

Well I'm two weeks out from moving in for grad school. I've been working at the Aquarium all summer teaching kids how to scuba dive. It's been somewhat comforting to see that kids here have been considerably more well-adjusted than they were back on the island. Perhaps living at a more reasonable income level helps.

The best part about working at the Aquarium, though, is seeing the inner workings of the place. I've watched archer fish get fed, pet an anesthetized sea otter, watched the new white shark be put in its tank, helped move tuna in slings from the Tunabago to their new tank, saw the inner workings of the plumbing system (which is way more interesting than it sounds), danced with an albatross, released newly-caught animals into our exhibit, and more. It's been a pretty busy summer.

Top of the list, of course, was getting to dive in the Kelp Forest Tank. Realize that this has been a lifelong dream since I first saw the feeding show as a little 4-year-old. So what does it look like inside the fishbowl?

Yeah, just about what you'd expect. You can see everyone outside with not a whole lot of distortion. That's not to say there aren't any optical illusions, though.

This shows you just how thick the acrylic windows are. Don't want that water going anywhere it's not supposed to...

  

  

The only part that's truly different (aside from being walled in, of course) is the concentration of fish. Sure you see fish out in the real world, but not nearly this many all in one place. This is a rockfish sleeping on a window pane, about 15 feet off the bottom.

Labor Day is the last day of the program, after which we have a few days of cleanup. Then I have two days of getting ready and it's time to go back to being a small fish in yet another big pond.

The End and The End and The Beginning

Today was my last day of work at CAOS. After two and a half years I hung up my name tag (actually I kind of smuggled it out of the building to take home) and clocked out for the last time.

This season has been different for me because even though I've been the youngest naturalist on staff all three seasons I've been here, I became the most senior naturalist in September with another naturalist's departure. I also knew from the outset that this year would be my last, so I did what I could to focus my efforts on training my replacements. My first two years I didn't really have a game plan. I figured I'd work until something else came along or I didn't want to work anymore.

Of course with my departure from CAOS comes my departure from the island. As I write this, I have just over 50 hours left on the rock. To be honest, the intense heat and humidity of the past two weeks are really helping relieve the separation anxiety. Still, this has been a pretty cool place to live. Frustrating at times, insufferably hot at others, and full of problems left and right, it's still a beautiful island. I've loved having the opportunity to truly get to know the reefs and the mangroves. They are so different from anything we have back in California. Majestic and fragile and colorful and busy and silent; every snorkel or dive I'd look for something new or unusual and never come up empty. With such regular visits over only two and a half years, I've watched the growth of the mangroves and the decline of Governor's Reef. I've seen the same stingrays come back year after year and greeted the new generations. New buildings have gone up all over the island as it continues to recover from past hurricanes and brace for future storms, last week's national elections brought in a new government, and the island is astir over what to do about the growing mountain of trash behind their capital. Still the natural world around them continues its quiet cycles of birth, life, and death. I'm glad I had the chance to see even such a small glimpse.

Brain coral.

Star coral.

Vase sponges with brittle stars and sea anemones.

Tarpon in the caves of Eden Rock.

Sea cucumber.

Rope sponge.

Hogfish.

Feather duster worm on Eden Rock cave wall.

All sorts of organisms on Eden Rock cave ceiling.

On Monday I start my new job at the Aquarium. To be honest, it's more or less the same job as I had in CAOS, but with significantly colder water. After a summer of Aquarium work and travels to Canada, it'll be time to start grad school for a couple of years. After that? Your guess is as good as mine. I'm making this up as I go.

Transition Time

Remember in that last post how I said that it was dangerous to say things like "if all goes according to plan"? I should've listened to myself. Turns out plans have changed and I will be leaving the island and returning to California on May 29th. In the meantime I'll be diving and doing final explorations of the island, as well as preparing for the journey back home (and figuring out what to do with all this STUFF I've accumulated...). I'm currently applying for a job at that little aquarium back home as an in-water naturalist for a kids' program, introducing them to marine life through snorkeling and scuba. As part of the application I have to post a video of me talking about some marine topic, and, against my better judgment, I'm including it here.



Yes, I'm aware I'm a dork. No valuable input needed.

I also have some more photos that have been backlogged a bit. These first two photos are a couple of freshly-hatched sea turtles we rescued at different times last year. The first one hatched on August 19th. The entire nest simply erupted out of the sand in front of the Winchester-Swann just after noon, and all the little hatchlings raced for the sea... except for two. These two were the runts of the litter and got stuck at the bottom of the nest under their siblings' shells. Some of the beach employees called our department over, as CAOS is the de facto Humane Society at the hotel, and we dug the nest out to make sure everyone had made it to the water. This picture is of the stronger of the two runts; as soon as we dug it out and placed it on the sand, it scrambled for the water. The other one was simply exhausted by the day's events so we kept it in a box in the office for the day to let it rest and released it later that night. Considering sea turtles are supposed to hatch in the middle of the night, the runtiest one probably ended up with the best chances of survival. See also: Charlotte's Web.





I found this next sea turtle swimming around in the dock area behind the Winchester-Swann after a boat trip to Stingray Sandbar. I would've left it alone and let it stay in the water, except that a)the dock is a dead end canal with somewhat stagnant water and a long, twisting path back to the open ocean, and b)the resident Tarpon, giant (4-6 foot long) fish who have been trained to fight over scraps thrown down from the neighboring restaurant were taking a little too much interest in the little guy, going to far as to bump him with their noses to see if he'd put up a fight. The boat captain and I scooped him up in a bucket and brought him back to the CAOS building for a nap, then rereleased it later that night on the other side of the hotel where the open ocean lay. I know these two rescue acts are sort of messing around with natural selection, but considering the low survival rate of sea turtles (about 1 in 100 make it to adulthood) and the fact that all sea turtle species are endangered, plus the fact that it's legal to eat these animals in Arrecife (bred in captivity, but still), I figured it wouldn't hurt too much to nudge the balance back in favor of the turtles just a little bit. Who knows - given a little time, we may start seeing more of this:


(Photo taken by Channing - sorry, I only have the low-res version right now)