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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Everybody loves Abby

Hi Sea Fans!

I just wanted to share some pics with you:

 Only a year old and already loving Abby's Aquarium Adventures from cover to cover!

The author, Heidi, doing actions with her reading of "Abby's Aquarium Adventures" - everybody loves starfish.

7 years old and look at the detail he's painted on the Abby Kingfish moneybox craft!

 I love seeing everyone having fun like this so please send me your photos of your completed craft, you reading the book, you making your craft ...any pics showing you and me together.  The first 5 photos will get a FREE craft kit (no matter where you live in the world).  So hurry and send them to abby@telkomsa.net.

Have a great day Sea Fans!

Cheers

Abby

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Giant Squid!

Hi Sea Fans!

Heidi often visits schools and chats to you guys.  A little while ago, one of the kids asked her about Giant Squid so I've decided to tell you a bit more about them because not everyone believes that there are Giant Squid out there!

To show you some proof, go to the National Geographic website links below and you' ll see some amazing photos.

First photos taken of live Giant Squid:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/photogalleries/giant_squid/photo2.html

Giant Squid captured and filmed for the first time:

                          http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061222-giant-squid.html

Once you've seen the photos and are convinced that there ARE actually Giant Squid in the oceans, read on...

These animals are spread worldwide, but the animals that man has found are mostly stranded in the North Atlantic (Norway and Newfoundland), or caught in the South Atlantic (South Africa), Southwest Pacific (New Zealand, Southern Australia) and the Northwest Pacific (Japan). 

Yes, you've seen this map on my blog before but this time I want you to find where the different oceans are so that you can see where the Giant Squid has been found.

Giant Squids are vertical wanderers, this means that they travel up and down in different depth zones. Adults (mantle length up to 4 metres) are believed to spend most of their time at depths of between 200 - 1000m. Juveniles probably stay between 100 - 300m, and young Giant Squids are usually caught near the surface. One little guy (10.3 mm) was caught at a depth of only 20 meters!  

Giant squids do not have any gas spaces in their bodies, which means they don't have soft bladders filled with gas to keep them from sinking like the fish's swim bladder. In fact, no squids do, and neither do really deep sea fishes. The high pressures down in the deep sea is too much for a bladder, it would pop (implode) because air compresses (squashes) easily.  How then is the giant squid able to survive in very deep waters without sinking or being crushed? The answer is ammonium ions. (Ammonia in water splits into ammonium and other ions.)   Ammonia is a natural waste product, like urine. Instead of getting rid of waste out of the body like humans go to the toilet, giant squids store some of the waste in their bodies. (This is why giant squids are not very tasty to eat!) Liquids can't be crushed or squashed like air and ammonium is lighter than seawater - therefor, no sinking squid!

So I hope this clears a few things up for those of you who didn't believe in the Giant Squid and I hope you found some of this interesting - I did! 

Have a great week Sea Fans!
Cheers
Abby
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PS. Squid are good fun to dissect so if you get a chance, ask mom to buy a whole one from the shop when she wants to make calamari and have a good look inside before she cooks it.  The beak is the most fun to find!

Rubber ducky, you're my friend!

Hi Sea Fans!

I've been writing up fun worksheets about ocean currents and you won't believe what I found! 

On the 10th of January 1992, a cargo ship travelling from China to America hit rough seas and lost 20 of its containers. One of those cargo containers had packages of rubber [plastic] ducks and other toys in it.  This container got a hole in it when falling off the ship and 29,000 rubber bath toys dropped into the ocean to begin a journey which, for some, is still ongoing.

Photo: gaetanlee

Over 15 years, these toys travelled the ocean currents, washing up on beaches across Alaska and the west coast of the United States.  By 2007, the toys began appearing on beaches in New England. Little did the toy manufacturer know in 1992 that their product would become part of one of the most simplistic, but data-rich ocean current experiments to date. (From a Virginia Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program Newsletter)

Isn't it amazing how something can travel countless miles around the globe just using the oceans currents!

Try something fun - print this map and then take a toy and follow one arrow to another to another to another ...etc and see how many countries you could visit if you were to float along in the ocean currents of the world.  Some of those rubber ducks travelled a long way!

Have a great week Sea Fans!
Cheers
Abby
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