Aquarium Valentine

Hi Sea Fans!

I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day.  We had such fun at the aquarium...we had to come up with ideas for Valentine Sea Crafts and the best one would be used as the activity for the day in our Ocean Crafts Centre.  Next year maybe you'd like to try this one:

A loving Fiddler Crab.

The heart body is filled with small chocolates (2 hearts joined around the edges back-to-back make a purse).  Have fun being crafty and don't forget that all sorts of marine craft kits are for sale, just mail me at abby@telkomsa.net.

Have a great week Sea Fans.
Cheers
Abby
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PS. Predators (Book II) is at the printers so you can start saving your money for a copy when it comes out next month!  New crafts will also be available.

Squirt squirt blow!

Hi Sea Fans!

Strange title I know, but you'll understand in a minute.

I was explaining something to members of the public yesterday and realised that I haven't told you guys about it.  Do you know that fish like the boxfish blow at the sand to uncover their food?  Well, do you want to know something even more interesting? .....Our boxfish got used to food dropping into the water from the surface so what he started doing was spitting water at us like a fountain (blowing the water surface for food).  Cute, but this is of course not what we wanted, so we had to make a plan.  Now our boxfish gets food buried under the sand and he loves it!  Instead of blowing water at the surface, now he blows the sand like he naturally would and the public get to see how boxfish feed out at sea.

Just another little morsel of behind-the-scenes information for you. : )
Have a great week Sea Fans.
Cheers
Abby
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Bugs

Hi Sea Fans!

The New Year knows how to start with a bang!  Between rushing to stranding calls and sorting out public query phone calls, we've really been kept busy this last month.  On top of all that, my favourite large exhibit got a parasite infection - headaches deluxe!

Fish, including those in the wild, carry parasites.  It's just like with humans, we have bugs inside us, but they stay in check unless we get stressed in some way and then they take over.  Well, that's what happened in one of our large exhibits.  We had a temperature spike a little while ago and true as Bob, that stress caused an outbreak of parasites.  They were only on the stingrays though so we knew that they were host specific (they only sit on certain animals).  The lab guys got samples of the parasites, had a look at them under the microscope and soon enough, we knew how to treat them.  

An aquarist checking out a parasite under the microscope.


Treatment meant that each stingray had to get a certain amount of medication every day, which seems easy enough, but it's not so easy when they get used to the taste and know what you're up to!  They're just like those of us who don't like brussel sprouts - you can try to cover the little green things up with all sorts of other things, but that taste will still be there and we'll know they're there!  Stingrays are clever that way, you can't fool them. We eventually had to put their medication (in powder form) inside capsules so that we could tuck each pill into a smelly (but fresh) piece of sardine and that would trick them into taking their medication. 

Putting the powder medication into the capsules.

The treatment worked well and our stingrays are looking healthy and are MUCH hungrier again. 

That's what I love about this job, you have to be able to do a whole range of jobs - cleaner, feeder, doctor, trainer and a whole lot more.  It keeps you on your toes, but it's great fun when your job isn't the same thing every day!  

Here's hoping that some of you want to do what I do one day.
Have a great weekend Sea Fans!
Cheers
Abby
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Shark Revival

Hi Sea Fans!

I was thinking about what I should write this week and then all chaos broke loose.  The day was running as planned, the routine stuff like cleaning of tanks and morning feeding was all done, the divers were finishing their last two dive feeds and suddenly...we got a call.  A public member was desperately looking for someone to help a shark in distress.  Some fishermen had caught a shark in their nets by mistake, removed it and left it on the beach!  Now we all know that sharks breathe IN WATER not on land, they need the water.  When we got there, these guys reckoned that the shark was fine and they were going to put it back in a minute.  Hmmmm, I don't think so.   Anyway, without further ado, we were off to the aquarium to try and save this poor animal.  Unfortunately, although we tried everything, including swimming it for over 4 hours, the shark didn't make it.  It was looking positive at one stage when he gave a few flicks of his tail and swam on his own for a bit, but then his muscles stiffened and he couldn't anymore.

Photo: James Watt

Why do I tell you such a sad story, you ask?  Well, it's so that you know the good and the bad.  Aquarium staff are often called out to help save a stranded or injured animal and unfortunately, some of the animals are too far gone by the time help arrives.  What you can do for me today (if you live by the sea) is make a promise to help stranded marine life by calling help (your local aquarium or marine life rehabilitation centre or Nature Conservation officials) when you see that they need it. [If you don't live by the sea, land animals and birds often need help too... and zoos, the SPCA and Nature Conservation can help them, so please make the call.]

Yes, I've had a few exaggerated phone calls like the one about the stranded turtle that was the size of a car tyre and possibly a tractor tyre (He ended up being smaller than a hub cap!) but you know what, we'd rather have a mistaken identity (tortoises don't have flippers like turtles) or an exaggerated call than having an animal suffer when we could have helped so please make that call and save a life.

Thanks Sea Fans, have a great week.
Cheers!
Abby
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