Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science - Isabel Perez, Week 4!!

 

Week 4 ✩

⤷ ゛Husbandryˎˊ˗

Husbandry: the care, cultivation, and breeding of crops and animals

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Hi! Today marks the end of my community practicum at the Frost Museum of Science. This will be my last blog :,-(

As I did last week, I will be mainly focusing on my experience and the information learnt instead of visuals, and alas, this will be a long one.

I hope you enjoy :-)

𓅰 𓅬 𓅭 𓅮 𓅯 ₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆

PICTURES

Top (left to right): Jake, Lucy, Daisy, Ali

Bottom (left to right): Nathan, Rebecca & Ina, Chance, Jenna

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MONDAY

  Alright, so this week's hours were from 6:30 AM to 3:30 PM, so every day I had to be up and running before 6:00 in order to make it on time.

<- Due to them starting so early, I had the most beautiful views all week long.

  My week began with meeting Aaron, the curator of the Husbandry Team, who made me a schedule of all the "cool stuff" that I can view and partake in to fully take advantage of the week.

  Then, I met with Jake (pictured above), who gave me a tour of the Museum through the lens of a Husbandry worker.

 

 Honestly, I wasn't expecting it to be too different from all the other tours I've gotten, but Husbandry has its own top secret rooms whisked away from the rest of the Museum, so, as you might have already guessed if you've been following along, I got lost a TON of times this week.

 Anyways, he took me through our different floors, which I will now describe to you because it can and it will perplex you.

 Museum Guide (Top to Bottom)  ->

Floor 5: WetLab- Growing corals, Moon Jellies (aka Jellyfish)

Floor 4: The Vista- Aviary, Sting-Ray Touch, Gulf Stream Exhibit (GSE)

Floor 3: The Dive- Carries a variety of fish, lobsters, seahorses, etc. A couple of the exhibits can be seen from The Vista.

Floor 2: The Deep- Jellyfish

Floor 1: Great Barrier Reef- Focuses on Corals and non-native fish.

"Basement": Contains quarantined fish and Life Support Systems

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I certainly hope this will help you better visualize the Museum. Don't be afraid to come back and look at it if needed, because it's taken me a whole month just to learn it LOL!

MOVING ON...

 After the grand tour, Jake took me to the basement to prepare the day's Brine Shrimp, and Naups, a baby form of the Sea Monkeys. This is what we feed our jellies, fishies, and some corals after boosting them with phytoplankton ->

Next, we went around The Deep feeding them. This task took longer than expected, and the syringes are a real arm workout.

Afterwards, I got to see the second GSE feed (10:30 AM), where we fed both the Hammerhead and the Sandbars as well as the Sea Turtle and the Rays. 

Names-

Hammerhead: Princess Megan (thee Stallion) the Hammerhead

Sea Turtle: Miko

Eel: Neil

  Later, after lunch, (1:00 PM) we went to go feed GSE again. This tank has about 500,000 gallons of water, making it our biggest exhibit. 

  The sandbars refused to eat during second feed, so we tried again. They did not eat. Megan did great though :-)

 I forgot to mention, but by this point in the day I had already done about two or three rounds of dishwashing. The dishes are never-ending, even for animals.

 Finally, we went to go do the afternoon Dive-level feeds with that same leftover brine and pellets. The fish were lovely.

  Something that really stood out to me, even from the first day, is how everyone on the team seems to get along. It was definitely refreshing to see, and important for everything to run smoothly.

Here I am, feeding the Jellies :-)

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TUESDAY

 Since I had a pre-set schedule, every day I came in knowing what was set for me to do.

Today I was with Lucy (pictured above), preparing the Vista and Dive levels for opening. However, before that, we went to collect the water quality samples for the Life Support System (LSS) team. This is done every day.

Afterwards, we headed to the Dive, where 

Lucy set me up with a Lobster tank to clean: the objectives were to ensure that the acrylic and rocks within were algae-free. 

   I was very scared of doing something wrong, and after what had seemed like an eternity of scrubbing, it felt as if I hadn't made a difference in the tank. But Lucy assured me that they all feel that way, and by doing this, we are preventing future potential algal problems. 

  The second tank took twice the time as the other one, and we ended up splitting the work, but that tank was SPARKLING by the time we were finished with it.

Pic of the second tank we cleaned ->

QUICK RECAP!

Once the Dive was done, I...

1. Helped feed some of the Vista fish with Daisy (pictured above)

2. Helped feed the GSE animals

3. Washed dishes

4. Fed the Dive fishes in the afternoon, bleached filter socks with Milton (not pictured </3)

5. Helped wash dishes

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WEDNESDAY

Aviary Day

Aviary Day! I've been psyched for this day because I knew that it meant climbing into the actual habitats and helping Ali, our specialist, with whatever she needed. That day, we also had a volunteer helping, so we finished everything super quick! 

Before even heading outside, though, we had to begin prepping all of the food. 

There are about 8 birds, 3 of which are the spoonbills! They were mainly who I dealt with, as I was working on the beach exhibit, which is where their food is. 

There are also two ducks, Blue and Green :-) They're very sweet girls.

  Alright, so, what I did was refresh their waters and habitat while Ali gave some of the birds their meds and supplements.

  Aside from that, I cleaned the acrylics and floor, prepping everything before opening at 10:00. On this day though, there was a special tour, so we had to be ready by 9:30.

  Usually, Ali has to do all of this work + more I failed to mention since I wasn't in the Mangrove exhibit ALONE. This explains why I ALWAYS see her outside. I'm very glad that I was able to help with her workload, and she was very kind with anything I may have needed.

  In the afternoon, we repeated everything.

Ali, putting Blues' ointment on her beak + feet

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

THURSDAY

Thursday and Friday were more relaxed days, as I was set to work with the reptiles, but due to my horrible fear of snakes, and the doors to the exhibits involving having to go THROUGH where they lived, that did not happen.

Instead, my day began with Chance (pictured above) and the LSS team.

Thursday is a particularly heavy day in this department, because they not only test the Alkalinity of the water, but the calcium and ozone in it as well. It's a very tedious task, but highly important to ensure that everything runs smoothly in our Aquariums.

After the tests, I went with Nathan, who explained to me 'Backwashing', along with its importance.

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Backwashing: Sand acts as a filter for the dirt in water. The water comes from the bottom to push the sand up and leaves from the top to blow all the algae, etc, into the sewers.

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He not only showed me what goes on behind our aquarium walls, but went in-depth, giving me a tour of all the appliances used, along with why, and what they would do in case of an emergency.

 CONTINUING...

After that, Aaron came with 6 new fish! I got to watch as they were transferred from containers and acclimated. This took a long time since our Freight elevator has to be handled by security only.

I also learned that it was National Intern Day! How cool :-)

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝  𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝  𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

FRIDAY

It's Friday, which means that not only is my week over, but also my practicum at this establishment.

 Let's get to it.

  Today I was placed with Hannah (not pictured) and was on food prep and breakout with one of our volunteers.

 I learned how to read the feeding charts, and weighed + fulfilled all the requirements for different feeds. I have never cut so many fish in my life.

  Afterwards, we did Breakout, which is what they call bringing food from the freezer downstairs upstairs if needed.

  Lastly, I helped with the Vista feeds and dishwashing before calling it a day.

  It was definitely bittersweet for me.

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FINAL REMARKS

I would like to say thank you to NMAL + YAP for giving me this insane opportunity!!

 I now have a newfound appreciation for museums, because there is SO much more happening behind the scenes than I ever could've imagined. I don't know why, but it wasn't until this week that it hit me that Husbandry is the backbone of this museum. Without them, I do not think that Frost would be nearly as successful as they are.

Not only that, but I learned that it really does take a team for things to work out properly. I'm very grateful that I got to work with SO many different people from so many different departments. Even if I was tired from the long day, I never left the museum without learning something, and being truly thankful for the experience.

Y,  finalmente, muchas gracias Ford!

Anyways...

Thank You for Reading!!

(if you made it this far)

Stay cool :-)

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