Opening

It has been a few weeks since I officially started training with the marine mammal team. The first week of training I focused on learning the 8-5 shift, and then shortly after I was transitioned to learning the opening shift, which is 7-4. While I am not a fan of waking up early to get to work, I really love being done early and my shift goes by really quickly whenever I open!

The opener is the first member of the marine mammal team to arrive at The Seas. When I arrive, it is my job to open the office, turn on the computers, get the phone messages, and then check on the animals. After that, I start preparing the AM diets for the dolphins. This basically means I sort and weigh fish (capelin and herring) for each of the 4 dolphins. This is a pretty tedious job since I have about an hour to prepare 12 buckets of fish. Afterwards, I clean the kitchen and then get ready to dive! The opener always dives to clean the manatee pool and uses the vacuum. I really like diving because it makes the morning go by really quickly. Typically a second person dives with me to help move the sand around while I vacuum the bottom, but sometimes, like this morning, I dive alone, which means the dive safety people have to tether a rope to me! After diving, I shower and get changed back into my clothes. Typically, I go watch a dolphin session or give a marine biology talk afterwards and then it is time for lunch! The morning definitely flies by when you are an opener.

After lunch I typically cover the manatee stage, which consists of answering questions, feeding the manatees and giving spiels. There are usually some other cleaning tasks I help with in the afternoon. For example, this afternoon I also prepared the PM diets, cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed some rails, did dolphin observations, and covered manatee some more.

So far I am really enjoying the internship! I am totally exhausted by the end of the day, especially because a lot of the work I do is pretty physical, but I find the job very rewarding. I enjoy talking to guests and working with the trainers to care for the dolphins and manatees! I'll be posting more soon about the manatees and my marine biology spiel, so be sure to check back soon for more posts about my Disney Dream!