Aquarium of the Pacific | Aquarium Blogs | All Entries
My favorite time on Saturday mornings during my weekly volunteer shift at the Aquarium of the Pacific is the hour just after the Aquarium opens and just before the majority of our guests arrive. This week’s blog includes a short point-of-view video shot last Saturday via a “volunteer-cam” in an attempt to share with you, the reader, a bit of the magic of that first hour of the day.
“Why are the blue whales here?” is a common question I get while working on the boat. The answer I most often reply with is “They’re here because they’re feeding on krill which is a small, shrimp-like animal.” Typically the krill they eat are pretty deep, around 500 feet or so, but I always mention how on rare occasions the krill are at the surface and the blue whales will lunge feed at the surface. I’ve never seen it done … until now!
No matter what part of the country my business travels may take me during the workweek, be it the urban maze of New York, the wilds of Alaska, the mountains of Colorado or the swamps of the Carolinas, I’ve always made it a point of getting back to Southern California in time to cover my Saturday volunteer shift at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Sometimes it’s meant taking a late red-eye flight or finding an unusual connection through tiny airports but somehow the majority of the times I’ve managed to make it back to cover my shift. In fact this month I’ve recorded my 5000th hour as a volunteer at the Aquarium.
To commemorate this personal milestone this week’s blog is a list of the top ten reasons why I’ve volunteered so many hours to the Aquarium.
The past few weeks, we’ve been seeing a decent number of cow/calf pairs of blue whales. Just recently I got word that a calf was seen nursing! Now even though I haven’t witnessed this with blue whales myself, I did recently get to see beluga whales nursing!
As you may have heard, the Aquarium now has a young female tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) on exhibit in Shark Lagoon! In honor of this groundbreaking display, I’ll be writing about the beautiful girl for my next couple blogs. Recently, I had the opportunity to be up close and personal for a Saturday morning feeding.
