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Aquarium of the Podcific: Building New Exhibits and Maintaining our Aquarium | Otter.ai

Aquarium of the Podcific: Building New Exhibits and Maintaining our Aquarium

Aquarium of the Podcific1h 40min

Erin Lundy

00:06

Hi, I'm Erin Lundy.

Madeline Walden

00:07

And I'm Madeline Walden and this is Aquarium of the Podcific, a podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Podcific. Southern California's largest aquarium.

Erin Lundy

00:15

Join us as we learned alongside the experts in animal care, conservation and more.

Madeline Walden

00:22

Welcome back to Aquarium of the Podcific.

Erin Lundy

00:24

I'm Erin Lundy, conservation coordinator for mammals and birds and animal care specialist. And

Madeline Walden

00:29

I'm Madeline Walden, the aquarium digital content and community manager. And what are we going to learn about today?

Erin Lundy

00:35

Today, we are highlighting our newest gallery here at the Aquarium and some of the work that went into that new gallery. So two departments that I don't think people often think about when you are building something and an aquarium, are not really directly animal related, but also in the sense really, our animal really important. And so we are talking to Mike Davis, who works in our facilities department, and they sort of work with maintaining a lot of the integrity of our infrastructure. And then we're also going to be talking to Reed Edwards, who works in our life support department, which really is exactly what it sounds

Madeline Walden

01:07

like supporting life at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Exactly. They

Erin Lundy

01:09

help build and plumb and you know, really maintain the systems the way that they're supposed to.

Madeline Walden

01:14

That's the team who's here. 24/7 Yeah, do you hear a lot? Yeah, they're here always watching.

Erin Lundy

01:19

So we're really lucky that we get such an inside look at sort of what goes into it beyond just the animal component of it. Because we've talked a lot about animals this season. But we haven't talked too much about all the other things that go into making an aquarium work. So Mike break or don't he does not break anything. Mike fixes everything that I break, and actually read is the one that I call to help me fix the other thing, so they break relate more to our animal care things.

Madeline Walden

01:45

So we have two entire departments dedicated to things that Aaron bring. Yeah, absolutely.

Erin Lundy

01:51

I really sound like I'm the worst employee. This whole season. I'm like, I didn't know how to dive when I started. And now I break everything. And everyone's gonna have to fix everything around me. It was a podcast. And now that's they just put me in a room be like just put her down somewhere. You can't break anything and this padded room when you're talking. So yeah, that's that's me. It's a little bit about me. But this episode is going to be about Mike and Reed and sort of some of the work that went into the SoCal gallery and reimagining that new gallery that has not been re done since 25 years ago. And also a little background on what else they do around here. Let's get into it.

Erin Lundy

02:36

All right. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for joining us. And do you want to tell us a little bit about what your job is? What's your title? And how long have you worked here at the Aquarium?

Mike Davis

02:44

Well, thanks for having me. By the way, people, my name is Mike, everything. I've been here for about 10 years now I started in housekeeping, which is now environmental services, basically cleaning the place up. And I've been promoted, I would say about four to five times to the point where now I am level three, tech and facilities building engineer. I worked in security previous and also safety, management, security, and displays gives you opportunity if you're willing to put in order for it. If you ever went to college or trade, or any type of trade school, and you can find a department that fits your skill level, more than likely, they're happy to usher you in and build on your skills and make you become a better person than what you were me. I'm very energetic and greedy when it comes to learning. Especially when there are physical things like builds and computer automation controls and things of that nature. So I just jumped on it. And I haven't turned around.

Erin Lundy

03:49

Yeah, I think that Mike's basically saying he's done everything that there is to do here. And he continued to do anything new here.

Mike Davis

03:58

I don't know how to say no, just yet. And so my list of duties, or skyscraper size at this point, I never complete the list because I finished one just to add three. And you know, it keep my mind busy. It keeps me functioning, and it keeps everybody think that they're bothering me because I'm busy all the time. But it's okay. There's big jobs and little jobs. And I found that when you're not taught the little jobs, it makes everybody else feel good about doing their job, because the little stuff being their way. My big projects are not in other departments way or things that they got to worry about. And so that's where I put my attention to, like to communicate, create that bridge between departments because if you go under you don't have to know how to do it. But if you at least part of the process, and you know what's going on timewise you feel a little better about about things and not just in the dark. Yeah. Can you fix this? And I say yes. You don't hear anything else. And then you're just wondering So hey, they might fix it. So I try to stay on point with those communications all the time. So

Erin Lundy

05:08

I think one of my favorite things is that every time I have a project or something that needs doing, I can go to you and be like, I have an idea. But I have no way to make it a reality. Like I haven't, I don't have the skill set to do something engineering wise to make my idea real. And without fail every time you're like, Oh, I know how to do that. Just give me a couple days, I'll get the materials and you've like, already ordered them somehow. And then like, an hour later, it's fixed

Mike Davis

05:33

my live blueprints. Without having it on paper. I like to go to the location and have conversation with the person and what they want. And so as we're having this conversation, I'm drawing the blueprint up in my head, I have like a catalogue of materials that we have and what I can order and buy into the conversation. Whether I built it before or not doesn't mean that I can't build it. And I usually will, and then I'll get it done sooner than later. I mean, sooner is better. For me. We have a process for big projects. But when they're little, I'd be like, just tell me then send an email to all the bosses. That way I can pre prep parts. And by the time the bosses get to me, they like your finish already. Yeah, yes. That little bit already? Yeah,

Madeline Walden

06:16

that's awesome. So can you tell us a little bit about the facilities department? What does the facilities department do?

Mike Davis

06:21

Alright, the facilities department are the caretakers of the entire building, when it comes to heating, chilling and all automation. So the temperature of the tanks are ran by our chill our our chillers, which we have three major big chillers, we have air handlers on the roof. And so our air handlers control temperature in the air, but also, contaminants in the air gets filtered out. We have special filters to catch certain things, certain areas are more susceptible to things so they have HEPA filters. In other areas, it's just particulate filters. might not know what I'm saying. But it's but you know, but we're, we're keeping every environment, its own environment. So we have northern Pacific, which is a different environment from Tropical Pacific, you can just tell by the name you northern cold, tropical warm. And so we have different things going on in that nature. All the plumbing and electrical in the whole building is our responsibility. So if we have to do tear downs and rebuild, we do it all in house, like complete structures, we took down a whole building whose studs were wood, so it was rotted. And to get to the ground, you got rid of it, and built a whole new building in this place with more environmental stability, stable materials. And they left me over there for about two months, it might just figure it out. And there was no one to say this is how you do it.

Erin Lundy

07:52

You have to know how to get in there, I

Mike Davis

07:54

have to like analyze what my problem is. See what my tools are available. I didn't just go and go and go and go. And I have a good boss, his name is Tom, he, he he sees that when I'm looking at something and I'm silent. I'm calculating, he'll tell people to leave me alone. And then he'll tell them to watch you tell we had a we have a big theater now a new one were very expensive camera. And they came to set it up. They thought they had what they needed to set it up. And then Tom just told me to come with him. He didn't tell me to do anything. And so I just go with him to watch these contractors put this, you know, high cost camera. And they're there. They're looking around and they look it up and I tell Tom how they're gonna get that up there. Tom says, I don't know. It's their job. And then I said, but look at Tom look at. So I'm pointing out stuff and Thomas looking at me and smiling. And I said, Hey, Tom, I'll be right back. And so I left and I just thought what we have on site that could get this imposition without no one getting hurt by doing it. I saw the guys were sitting there staring. And then I said I can get it up there. So he said, So how are you going to do it? And then I get silent? Because I'm looking at everything. And then Hey, Tom, so what is he going to do? And he likes? Just watch. Just watch. And then I come back with no crank or restabilized area where we're standing at? And I get it up there and the guy turned around? What's your name? Mike. Thank you. So like I saved his day.

Erin Lundy

09:27

Every day, thank you so much. Oh

Madeline Walden

09:29

my it'd be maybe you know, different if we had a problem and we call it an outside company, hey, can you come fix this problem versus someone that talks to the people that work here and knows the issues that they're facing every day and can design something so much more efficiently? For our purposes.

Mike Davis

09:43

That's what I try to do like the most when I talk to the people I'm gonna give it to I have my work order and what you're asking me to do. And then I talked to the people because I need to know why there was an issue in the first place. And so I'm gonna build something new. I don't want to create the same problem we had before and

Madeline Walden

10:00

I'll be a waste of your time and everyone's I'll be back again. Yeah,

Mike Davis

10:03

I'll be back again. That's amazing. And I try to do that. Most of the time, just or if I do do a build, I walk a person through it, and explain to them why this is happening. And why this is happening. Because some people, like it's not what you do certain things just don't pay attention to Yeah, I pay attention to everything. I can't help it.

Madeline Walden

10:25

We need your brain. That's definitely especially somewhere, you know, where we have animals and there's there's different precautions that we have to take and, you know, adds another layer of security to everything that we do.

Erin Lundy

10:35

I have a question for you. Madeline, I want you to think about this. Yes. While I give my answer, you think what is the funniest thing that you've broken that Mike's head, and I can tell you, for me, as recent memory was that I was leaning against one of the perimeter boards at our holding otter area, and I was leaning on it to feed the Otters snapped in half. And I fully broke the entire that part of our enclosure fully, like broke this board and then turns out also broke, what was holding the board up, and I just had to go explain to my

Madeline Walden

11:13

kid, and the second you put in your mouth, he was blue. He was

Erin Lundy

11:17

like, why are you fix it, you know, like it basically was already done. But like, you know, then having to work together with these animals that are very curious about stuff and finding way to get Mike into that area that was safe for him. And that the Otters weren't stealing all your tools or doing whatever it is that otters like to do. We heard a lot about how mischevious they are. And then just having that fixed like so immediately and having it it's nice to have a resource like that where I'm like, Yeah, I embarrassingly fell and broke everything.

Madeline Walden

11:44

I remember now, yeah. Oh, Mike has helped with things that are super important like that. And then something that's like, pretty unimportant to our day to day is that we have our digital camera that we use for marketing purposes, and it's locked up in a drawer in one day, the lock just fully broke, and couldn't get to the camera. And I went up to Mike like hey, like, you know, this, this, I may send an email to you because I am scared. And I'm like, I didn't break it, I promise. But here's the information you need to know. And like it was fixed so quickly. And like not only was it fixed, the whole lock had to be replaced. And like he got this new key and show me how to use this new key and everything. And you've just been great. Also, you're very nice when I was harassing you the other day about the ice machine and the break room. Because we have our the otters have one to this ice that's like it's the good ice if you know what I'm talking about. And I walk in, I see Mike messing with the ice machine. I'm like, Wait, you're replacing it? Is it still gonna be the good ice? And he's like, it's gonna be even better. And he's right.

Mike Davis

12:38

He improved the ice more efficient. Oh,

Madeline Walden

12:41

okay. Nice is efficient. So from everything important to you? Yes. You know, our animal safety and making sure Erin doesn't fall through anything again to the

Erin Lundy

12:50

I may fall through more things? What is something sort of unexpected about working in your department that some people might not realize as part of your job?

Mike Davis

12:58

Unexpected? I don't I don't think unexpected fits me. Because like, I don't want to say no, I just want more experienced at everything. So unexpected will will be me taking over the job that they might have wanted a contractor to do. But they wasn't doing the job, right? Or they did it and it wasn't what we need. So are we going to go back and forth with someone to get it right? Or can we take care of it in house? Can we get it to the level that husbandry needs it? Because we can have stuff built by outsiders? But they don't talk to husbandry? They don't know. What can be dangerous to the animals? Yeah. It's from simple glues and pipes. And so that stuff, it happens all the time. So I guess it's unexpected, but I expected you'd expect it. Because it's just a room that we're in. And I'm not saying somebody did a bad job. But they're not linked in with the education department with the dive locker rooms. And they ask him more questions. Yeah. A ton of questions. Yeah. I like the panoramic point of view of what's going on and keep it widescreen. Yeah. And then try and cover all the bases.

Erin Lundy

14:07

I think it's funny. I know that there's been mornings where I'm in at 6am. And I've seen you here like working on the lucky forest or something. And then there was night shifts where I'm here at 11pm. And Mike is fixing the floor in the otter, the northern gallery. Well, the other question that we wanted to ask you about your position is like, do you interact with the animals day to day in your job? Well, I've

Mike Davis

14:26

took in every opportunity with animals on a constant basis. Yeah, so I've been snorkeling with the sharks and rays and the trap tank. I've took a little boat out in the shark tank in Shark lagoon. So I can do work inside a boat out there. A little bitty boat and I had a rope on both sides put on myself across the dance fun. I was drilling into wall and land and stuff in there and touch the shark. I bet the Otters me and otters are like homies. Yeah, but we have a lot of new ones. So we got to kind of have a little one on one. I flew our red tip hawk or red tail hawk.

Erin Lundy

15:06

Well, here's your favorite animal.

Mike Davis

15:08

Yes, I am a Raptors guy. Yeah. And not basketball team. The penguins, the penguins are some of the funniest animals. I had not the greatest opportunity was when you have them in your lap, and then their poop on your shoe. Yeah. That's great. It's like that's, that's that's your ritual to to get in to kind of be the cool guy with the penguin. And so, yeah, I mean, other than that, everything is like, everybody can go to the touch tank and like touch race or sea anemones with sea slugs and things of that nature. But those particular things that the snorkeling the the flying of the Hawk, that's at the top of the list. Yeah.

Madeline Walden

15:44

That's so awesome. I love that I love that, you know, we work in a place where I know I can personally take that for granted. Sometimes, you know, I have a stressful day or something's going on. And then you know, I have to like remind myself, look at where you work walk out. And you can just go and stand in the tropical tunnel for an hour, just kind of reset a little bit. Or I can go and tell Erin like, Hey, I'm having a bad day. And she's like, come feed a sea lion. The next

Mike Davis

16:09

day, you can go up there and get in, give handshakes with Parker, who will just give a handshake with Parker in the middle of the day. Just make sure they

Madeline Walden

16:18

are so lucky. So I just faked that I have bad days all the time.

Erin Lundy

16:22

I think that's the coolest. I'd like there's so much community. And then I think that you work so hard to build relationships with all these people too. And the only way that we ever feel like we can repay you is with hey, here's some experience working with the animals. And for us, it feels like, you know, this is all we can offer you but it's nice to hear that that is something that you look forward to.

Mike Davis

16:41

I'm waiting to get to as somebody training you and train our animals I want to do

Erin Lundy

16:46

like you're stealing everyone's jobs. Contractors out of the way everyone else training the sea lions

Mike Davis

16:54

in front of us every second in the 24 hour clock. Oh, they need three hours for sleep and then come right back in. But that's one of the things that I liked when I watch it when they do in the feeds with the sea lions and how will you know, come back go down spot over here. And yeah, hi, Tammy. Do

Mike Davis

17:11

you have a favorite sea lion? Is it Parker?

Mike Davis

17:15

it? It's me and Parker got this strange relationship. went up there to take pictures with him before on a birthday. And I have a full on beard. And it was when I had it nice and thick ya know, Parker weighed about five times more than me. Parker got next to me. His whisker touched my beard. He stopped. He looked at me. What the heck?

Erin Lundy

17:36

Was that hair your face? I have hair on my face.

Mike Davis

17:39

Like no, no, no, I think he backed. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'll say how to back that was the that was that. That was funny.

Erin Lundy

17:50

He's sensitive in the summertime.

Madeline Walden

17:52

You know, it was also a cancer. Parker was sensitive we're a sensitive group. He

Erin Lundy

17:57

He's turning 21 This year, which is exciting for Parker in and of himself. But he goes through what's called rot during the summertime where he gets up to 850 pounds. I think he's the biggest he's ever been. And then he gets really sensitive. And

Mike Davis

18:10

that's probably why he looks so huge.

Erin Lundy

18:13

Part of you, he is Big Brother, you're so big. But because they go through this thing where they gain a ton of weight. And what they typically be doing is defending their territory and fighting off other males and guarding their harem of females. And he doesn't really do any of that stuff here because it's just him and then some other males in the habitat. He doesn't seem to miss it. But he still goes through the hormonal fluctuation of gaining weight and then losing weight. So it's so easy for things to just kind of like, make him get the ick for lack of a better one time he stepped on a little cut piece of herring and he like picked up his flipper and looked so horrified by it, because it was all squished on his flipper. And he looked visibly shaken. Fully left, like went all the way to the water and would not come back. He gets the ick real bad?

Mike Davis

19:04

It's like anybody that owns a puppy and walks around barefoot. Oh, yeah,

Erin Lundy

19:07

that's what he experienced. I feel for him. So on your birthday. We'll see about getting you into train to see like but maybe not Parker since he so?

Mike Davis

19:18

Well, I don't have the full on beard. Okay,

Erin Lundy

19:21

maybe he'll be fine. So funny. Well, we did want to talk a little bit about we're reimagining one of our original galleries here at the Aquarium the SoCal gallery for the first time since the aquariums opened in 1998 for 25th anniversary is being totally redone. And I know that there is a lot of planning that goes into it not just from like the exhibit and you know, tank design side of it, but also from the facilities and life support departments because we did a rip down walls to make that whole process start. So what was that like on your end?

Mike Davis

19:54

It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot of work and it's you would think the area As big right, okay, we have this big area. And so we can all come in here and just do our thing. And then you realize it's not as big as you thought. There's people working right next to people. So executing your plans, and where you want to start is probably the most important thing. So that if one person is one area, somebody else needs to be in another area. But what if you can't do your your Part A without this part of it being done. And so then we have to take the plans that were by that we get from who designs everything, and we have to make it work in the area. Some things are not covered. But we have to make it work regardless. Some measurements or give or take, we have lots of plumbing, it's an aquarium. So our pipes are coming out of everywhere and going everywhere. So you can lose space fast once you start getting up into the ceiling. But we have to be on point to where none of that matters. Because we still have to find a way around that. We will hit a left, put an elbow and pump something around something. Because there's no we can't not plumb it. And so we can't

Madeline Walden

21:18

show it's okay.

Mike Davis

21:20

So even though there's a lot of plans, and you have blueprints and where stuff goes, that's like 50% of the battle. The other 50% is the actual putting in in place, making it all work and making it functional, while also making it safe. And making it to where and when we walk away from it that 100 can come in and they can do their job and they're not in danger. Sound foundations, we are in California, so the earthquake thing is real. We would hate to put something up have a shake that then this starts cracking and a tank leans over.

Erin Lundy

21:51

I never thought about like seismic like how do we protect our tanks and you know, acrylic structures and all those things against seismic activity, you're

Mike Davis

22:01

the tank, the better for itself. Okay, because it's holding so much weight. And it's not sitting on a platform, it's sitting on concrete. Okay. But then you got like our or what are the what are the first tanks this will be in the new gallery when you first walk in to go be the focus tanks. They're up in so I have a fiberglass framed for him to sit on reinforced the heaviest one with stainless steel. But they're all sitting on a real thick rubber pad that gets that can take the vibrations. And the tank is acrylic and acrylic and rubber almost. As long as there's no liquid in between, they won't slide you put braces around the tank back to the wall. The same way you would do flat screen TVs if you put them behind

Erin Lundy

22:52

you suppose each of our tanks is actually just a flat screen TV if you poke the actual acrylic it just has that weird like plasma thing.

Mike Davis

23:05

And like so things like that come from us on our side. Yeah, we get our plans. That's not included. But when the build is finished and you're looking like okay, safety so what if it shakes okay? Now add add add Yeah, and, and that can be for anything such a valuable

Madeline Walden

23:22

resources to have someone who's still, like I said, intertwined with everything and thinks of things like that.

Erin Lundy

23:28

I think recently, one of the things that I get to help participate in is moving our eelgrass tank into our so called wonderful time. It was a lot of work. But one of the funniest parts of it is that it's just like this, it almost felt like this ragtag team of people working together to find a way so this tank is brand new. You guys are gonna see it when you come visit the SoCal gallery. It is 30 feet long. It is no joke. 30 feet long, and the only way to get it into the gallery was to push it through the sea lion tunnel 30

Mike Davis

24:01

foot tank with two pallet jacks. Yeah,

Erin Lundy

24:04

it was crazy.

Mike Davis

24:06

One pallet jack was motorized and one wasn't. But that didn't really help. Um, it was the manpower and not only moving it to where it goes. Of course it's not sitting on the floor. That would be too easy. No. Yeah, we had to get at least three feet up and onto concrete platform. But it all happened. Um, give or take cutting out some of the wall for the proteins.

Madeline Walden

24:36

But you made it happen.

Mike Davis

24:39

But that's what we have to do. Because putting the wall back is easy. Yes, all the drywall and steel studs so we can cut that all we can put that back and then you will never know we we cut it in the first Yeah.

Erin Lundy

24:49

And they have been in there since and I didn't notice that that wall was

Mike Davis

24:54

the way the tanks are built them. Those proteins, they have to be on the outside. It's because I was asking, Well, why are they not behind it? And I was told they can't be. And so I said, okay, because I don't do that part. So I'll accept that part. And so um, but we got it up there. And I know we're talking about it like it was just was fun and games, but when you see it, please think about it.

Erin Lundy

25:20

How much do you think that tank weighed?

Madeline Walden

25:24

A lot. Yeah. And just

Erin Lundy

25:26

imagine like, what it was like seven or 10 of us just physically pushing it with our body wastelands

Madeline Walden

25:31

watching you in the tunnel. Yeah. Oh, it was a show like,

Erin Lundy

25:35

we're very entertained by it. People

Mike Davis

25:36

think that they come here to see the sea lions, but really, the sea lions go to the tunnel to watch people.

Erin Lundy

25:42

Chase especially Yes, like what you guys doing down there? Let's play. But I think something like that, like, people don't think about that. They don't think about how this, I don't know how many pounds but very, very heavy tank got in place. Because you know, they just show up and they see. And that's kind of what we want. You know, we don't necessarily want people thinking about like, how does it take it in here. But at the same time, when you're building something, those are all things that have to be considered that I don't think most people think about. So it's pretty cool to think that like you and then Reed from life support, who we're gonna talk to also, we're working so hard behind the scenes to make this very seamless experience for our guests that no one's going to notice the work that you do, but in the best possible way. Like that's the point of it. Almost all

Mike Davis

26:25

the cell phones. We didn't get no video.

Erin Lundy

26:28

I have a picture of the tank though. The home Oh,

Madeline Walden

26:31

I heard some people got some content. Okay.

Erin Lundy

26:33

I think I have a video of the two forklifts moving the tank at the same time. It was fun, which was the coolest thing to

Madeline Walden

26:39

happen at like 7pm.

Mike Davis

26:43

Chris driving it on the floor. Yes, that was pretty fun.

Erin Lundy

26:45

So this long tank had two forklifts one on each side of it because you obviously can't tilt it up one way or another. And one forklift can't handle it because it's 30 feet long. And so for me who has no engineering brain whatsoever, I was like, how are we going to move this thing from where it was delivered in our service yard to like outside? Yeah. And it was so cool to see like two forklifts one on either end, and then someone on a walkie being like a little no pullback, pullback and then having the forklifts move at the exact same speed to move this tank, like a good way. Yeah, it was so cool. And I was like, I don't know how

Mike Davis

27:21

to change from the driver to the puller. Like yeah, I was in front. And Chris was the power. So I was in neutral. Yep. But neutral that wasn't working out. So I told Chris, I gotta be the power. Yeah, man. You just got to be neutral. And that's just to get it in front of these doors. Yeah.

Erin Lundy

27:36

And then we just shove it in. Yeah.

Mike Davis

27:39

I think the oohs and ahhs from the people, were something that I liked who was going to sparkler gone. Yeah. Because if he wasn't close, and he was like, Oh. I remember this one kid. He said,

Madeline Walden

27:52

That's big. And it's surprisingly big. I'm really excited for our guests to be able to come see it. And like, while you're in it, I'm sure it's difficult, you know, if you're trying to move it, it's like, alright, we got to do this. And then afterwards, like that's going to be here for a very long time. And that story is going to mean so much to so many people because people are going to come and enjoy that exhibit. And that's pretty much every single exhibit you see at the aquarium. There's a story behind it like that, how we got into how it happened versus what walls we had to remove and make it big again. Now you

Erin Lundy

28:21

don't even notice that that work happened because that's the point is like, you are just enjoying the ocean and you wouldn't be able to have that sort of seamless experience without Mike's participation in it. So

Mike Davis

28:32

another great one was to yellowtail tank.

Madeline Walden

28:35

Oh, and

Erin Lundy

28:36

vision PVC. I'm

Mike Davis

28:37

trying to tell you I'm not gonna get into it, but it was a day. Hey, that was a day because we we have to lift it.

Madeline Walden

28:44

Yeah. second story. Well, wow, you see

Mike Davis

28:48

how big it is? Yeah, and then over and over the lip, but not hit the well hanging from the ceiling so scary. Like that was? That was a good one.

Erin Lundy

28:57

I think I would be very satisfied to see the conclusion of that but I would be so stressed watch it like I was stressed out watching the 30 foot tank get like forklift it cuz I was like, it was you know, it's heavier on one side because of all the acrylic and all my good ones too. But as soon as it's done, you're like, we did it like that was really cool. What are you the most excited about for the SoCal gallery and all of the things that you've been working on? What have you seen that you're like, that's gonna be cool when it's open.

Mike Davis

29:24

I think this this gallery is gonna bring a letter energy like when when you walk in, it's gonna have your eyes going to the right, going to the left, going up. Wait a minute, a projector up, looking at the ground like it's gonna be so much going on. I think that it's gonna be something for everyone. When they get into a gallery, the tank we're just talking about it's so long, and it can show so much ocean life going on just in one tank. I can't wait to see that. That one finish just because the sheer length of it looks beautiful. What else? Um, I mean when you get to the tunnel You know, the sea lions is the star of the show. But I think the way it was before, I'm not saying it was bad, but you come from, from being well lit at Blue cabin.

Erin Lundy

30:12

It's like you enter a cave. Yeah, it was dark in there,

Mike Davis

30:15

just like a cave. And then when you come out of the cave, you're at the tunnel. And so now, when you come in from Blue cavern, and when you come in, it's gonna be like, Oh, what's this? You have something educational, flash green. Given out information that you had these projector you had this tank, the head? Is that a projector? Yeah, I have a tank in a bigger tank than a bigger tank than another projector. And this is so much going on around here. I think that's probably going to be one of the best things. So there'll be a lot of photo ops in there.

Madeline Walden

30:47

Madeline's excited um, sounds like we're gonna get lots we do have an Instagram, like Instagrammable spots planned. And they're

Erin Lundy

30:54

planned. And you're like, we know where the best or the Yeah, if you need

Madeline Walden

30:57

any profile picture comes with the aquarium. I think it got some spots for you.

Erin Lundy

31:02

I think it's gonna be cool. Because I with the projection, everything, it almost looks like you are walking under the water surface.

Mike Davis

31:08

And that's when all that's super immersive. I love that

Madeline Walden

31:13

I'm so excited because it is, you know, a gallery that has been here for 25 years and has been relatively unremodeled relatively untouched. I've seen

Erin Lundy

31:20

it the same way since I was an intern in 2015. Coming

Madeline Walden

31:23

here as a kid. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's

Mike Davis

31:25

the second gallery I've been a part of rebuilding. The first one was our animal changing, animal changing gallery. I think I was here a year, I was doing a six day weeks, I was helping the contractors from Germany. With everything that's on the wall, when you go into art gallery, all the crystal hanging from the ceiling. None of that would have been like they had the crystal. But they didn't have to get it up and stay foundation of the stuff that hold it in place.

Madeline Walden

31:58

Those are delicate. So you don't want them falling, let alone you know,

Erin Lundy

32:01

the idea that they're like, We have this, uh oh

Mike Davis

32:05

I can make it stay. And so that was just fun. Because we I mean, you look in and then okay, if I get this and lay this out on the floor, and if you see it happening, you wouldn't know what's going on. Yeah. But I kind of do. And why is it laying on the ground? I'll say it well, I got lasers. And I'm mapping out the ceiling and matching this with that. And then somehow I get this in the ceiling. Yeah. And then once that's in the ceiling, now we have the structure to hang on from and then white clay sculpture on the wall that we have a projector projecting on. I had to put all of that on the wall. Yeah, they just came with this

Erin Lundy

32:39

the stuff like here's a sculpture. Good luck.

Mike Davis

32:42

Okay, this is heavy. Yeah, this is nice and heavy. But they had the brackets. But there was like, we need some help making sure when we put it in the wall, it don't fall out and pull the wall. So I spent a lot of time over there with that one. But that was fun. I think demo was funner. Yeah.

Erin Lundy

33:01

I mean, Mike, let me go on a sledgehammer break down one of the walls in the SoCal gallery. I was having a bad day. And I was like, Mike, can I please. And it was when we were doing the demo for it. To be clear, it was not wild. So it was part of

Mike Davis

33:16

kind of went well, because for more people came over Oh, we all needed it. Yeah, it was a section of the wall, that we're going to cut it cut it out. Big wise, just pull the whole big piece out. But they you know, little extra energy. So if you're here, you can pick this enrichment for us. And they all left smiling. Everybody loves

Erin Lundy

33:37

me meeting Parker is me breaking. Even this, I needed this today. And it's just it's so fun. And it's so satisfying.

Madeline Walden

33:45

Is there an area of the aquarium that you would love to like just dive into and just fully remodel or fully do something different with do you have like a vision and Mike Davis vision for a gallery or an exhibit?

Mike Davis

33:58

You know what I wish we could bring back when we had the little crocodiles. They were so cute. They were really really cute. And I never got to interact with them, but they recall. Yeah, they were everybody had a color like that with purple that was yellow, blue. We can bring them back.

Erin Lundy

34:13

Mike's like, I'm gonna build an entire new alligator exhibit

Mike Davis

34:16

ideas, but I want to sit down because right now it's like a lot of unfocused ideas. And then, but I will bring back the milkweed plants so we can get the monarch. Yeah, I think that's

Erin Lundy

34:30

impressive. Yeah, we're doing it.

Madeline Walden

34:31

There's a lot of like out back. There was a couple of cocoons out there recently. Oh, yeah. Things are happening.

Erin Lundy

34:37

My say we need these butterflies.

Mike Davis

34:40

To everyone listening. I knew nothing about milkweed and monarchs and all this great stuff. But being at the aquarium, I've marked a whole lot of different types of milkweed and how one butterfly likes this one and one likes that one. And it's like it's just the coolest plant to have if you want a natural, like a natural Beauty thing that just just happened all by itself, something that you don't have to go monitor or maintain water to plant. You can do it in your backyard. Yeah, just grow a bunch of milkweeds. And then right time of the year, you got monarchs flying everywhere. It's

Erin Lundy

35:14

very endangered too, right. So we're doing everything we can to help them out. We have a green roof, which I think is something that we are working to continually improve, but the green roof has some milkweed growing on it too. And so hopefully, the butterflies can hang out up there. And then we have a butterfly garden behind the aviary, I believe. And it's not where public can really access just because we want to make sure that those butterflies in the chrysalis is are all protected. But that's something that my boss, Rob, and a bunch of our animal care specialists have been working to maintain, which has been fun to see so

Madeline Walden

35:46

that we do stuff like this, you know, we're an aquarium people think. It's been fun. It's fun that as an aquarium, you know, we we are doing things like that things that we wouldn't necessarily think of like, yeah, we do have a native garden, in our front plaza, and then also by the watershed, where we have a little butterfly garden.

Mike Davis

36:07

The native garden is where we got all our hummingbirds live in. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty dope. You come into work and you get to the staff door. And you got a couple of hummingbirds just chillin. Yeah, they looking at you like, Yeah, I saw you yesterday. He's supposed to be here.

Madeline Walden

36:27

No, it is, it is a really magical place to work. Because not only do we have the animals inside, we are so thoughtful about the animals outside of the aquarium and who comes to visit us and it's it's really special to walk up to work and be like, Oh, that's the hummingbird that said hi to me yesterday. There he is perched and Oh, there's the butterflies that are hanging out around here.

Erin Lundy

36:47

Just remember, this is like little juvenile squirrel that's talking about. We all know are like the same squirrel. He's in the service yard.

Mike Davis

36:56

Like he pops up like he's like literally telling you. So as you finish, can I go now.

Erin Lundy

37:01

And he's like running through the yard. And like, he is not scared of people. And so you if you're not looking you could accidentally like I don't know that he would get to the point. But he'll be like right under foot. And like running in between or like Dude, that's going on, but

Mike Davis

37:14

didn't know where he's going. He's happy.

Madeline Walden

37:18

Well, we have some questions from social media for you. We wanted to know, what are the best parts of your job, and maybe some of the most frustrating parts,

Mike Davis

37:26

the best parts of my job is being able to create, constantly being able to create, that's a big thing with me. I was big on like, artists type stuff when I was in high school did drafting because I got to see I got to draw how structures were gravitated to tools since the age of eight. And so I've always been trying to build things. So I still buy Legos to this day. And I won't tell you my age, but they're so that's like one of the best things and, and frustrating. Um, I don't really let my work frustrate me. I try not to move too fast. And I don't move slow. And I'm moving methodically, it kind

Madeline Walden

38:11

of seems like if there is a frustrating aspect of your job, you fix it. Yeah. So it's no longer frustrated and in process probably alleviate the frustration for a lot of people

Mike Davis

38:20

where it will be something that frustrating somebody else and then now I'll take it upon myself to let me in that frustration, because it's not mines, but it's in my realm of fixing.

Madeline Walden

38:31

And maybe we touched on this already. What are your hours? Like? Are you always on call?

Mike Davis

38:36

Um, well, I'm after my latest promotion. Now I'm at home called me guy. Because of our chiller plant that maintains the temp for the whole building. All the tanks are there's everything. It's like graveyard shift. And we don't have too many people here, maybe one or two people from life support, life support. There is no responsible for maintaining our chillers and a chiller plant in the boiler plant. But they have to have a little bit of a wareness all my stuff happens. You can be talked through it over the phone. And as far as the hours. I do at this point, I do whatever hours necessary to get stuff done. Yeah. And so I could have literally six day 58 hour week, and then a 43 hour week. People think I'll probably do more in the 58 hours like you'd never at home could always see you here. They come back they go home and come back with friends when they're off. You're still here.

Madeline Walden

39:32

Yeah, no, we're so lucky to have someone like you that's so dedicated people like you that care. I think so

Erin Lundy

39:38

you maintain all of the like guest facing things, but also so much of the support structure for the animals to survive. And that is so much work to do. And it's it's such it's worth it like when it's done well you don't notice that it's being done. And I think that that is what I try and do. Yeah, I know that you've helped builds the interest structure for a lot of the projects that I personally get a chance to work on and a lot of infrastructure that supports so many of our conservation efforts like the sea otter, surrogacy pools and that area, you built the entire floors and stairs and decking and all of that, that allows us to walk around was pretty cool.

Mike Davis

40:16

When you learn how to do stuff that you never did before, like in your mind, you understand all of it the whole process, but you never did it. And so I will just like what I understand all this and cut all this material, I can do all of this. So just because I haven't done this before, doesn't mean I can't decide. I put all kinds of brain cells skin tissue. The same thing, like you said about surrogacy? Yeah. Then the platform floor, you see penguins. Yeah, that was really cool the door. Like I said, like building and this gives me many facilities just gives me opportunities just to build. I never know what I'm gonna build next. Yeah. And that's, that's a good thing.

Erin Lundy

40:55

You may have answered this in all of those examples. But do you have a favorite project that you've worked on?

Mike Davis

41:02

Favorite project?

Mike Davis

41:09

Well, I will say the floor and penguins, because yeah, I was just given a picture from

Erin Lundy

41:20

my boss gave you a picture that he drew, I'm sure on a napkin.

Mike Davis

41:26

To his credit, he was on a computer, a picture looked

Erin Lundy

41:29

clean. He was a SketchUp.

Mike Davis

41:32

But there was no measurements. There was no nothing. I just I looked and I said, Okay, what do I have to match what I'm looking at? And then I told him, okay, I could build it. He was like, Sure. I was like, Yeah, and I just went around the yard, called a few people started gathering all this material, start measuring stuff out. Then Brett came back and he said, I'm not sure I asked you. He says, I come I give you an idea. And then you take everything on my idea. And then you just make it better by adding all this other stuff I could have ever imagined. And to me, it just it just came out, it just came out is one of the way it's leveled and way all the pieces can move. So it doesn't get clogged and dirty with the feathers from the penguins. The drain line is now the three layers of PVC that's removable instead of rusty metal that can rest up on you. Yeah, so I was thinking of all this stuff to make this better this better. That better. And I haven't been back there since you haven't

Erin Lundy

42:30

needed to because you haven't. Yeah, he did it perfect. That's great. So I mean, for anyone who is this is the penguins behind the scenes area. And this is not the front facing area. So this is where we would sometimes do encounters and where we would take penguins back if we had them, you know, separated for health reasons or breeding season. And the area was fine, but it had not been reimagined or redesigned, since our penguin habitat was built. And when you have animals in a space, you very quickly learn what doesn't work. And it's not always easy to totally redo a space. And so there was a deck area that was just it would just get dirty really quickly. Because penguins poop a lot when you're holding them back there. And turns out there wasn't really a great way to rinse that down without having to rip everything up. And it was just a lot of work to keep that area the way that we needed to to. And so when Mike redid it, it everything is just like easily removable pieces. And it is almost like Lego, you can put it back together very readily. You can clean under it, you can rinse all of those. It doesn't really feel like it's there. You know, like and weirdly the best part doesn't smell like penguin which I love. I don't love the smell of penguins we just

Madeline Walden

43:41

recorded with Rachel about our diving episode. Her her least favorite exhibit to dive in is penguins because of the there's one cent Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Mike Davis

43:52

I was in there for few weeks. Mike's like I'm familiar. Tell Rachel I know about that life. Light, because they're cool. Yeah, they're curious. And they, they're nice. For the most part. For the most for

Madeline Walden

44:07

the most part.

Erin Lundy

44:08

They can be finicky sometimes, but

Mike Davis

44:11

things to keep their attention my keychains anything shiny.

Erin Lundy

44:15

They're like a little kid

Madeline Walden

44:16

like wow. Me too. Yeah. Wow. I've ever been rude to you just dangle something. But that's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for joining us today on Aquarium of the Podcific This has been so

Erin Lundy

44:31

yeah, thanks for fixing everything that I break.

Mike Davis

44:33

No, it's okay. I didn't build the first iteration of it and you couldn't lean on and that's

Erin Lundy

44:39

why I felt well. Thank you, Mike. Thank you for your time. This was awesome.

Mike Davis

44:43

Appreciate you guys having me on the podcast. Yeah, come to the aquarium and come check us out. You might be lucky might be one of the lucky people to see me. And I can give you a personal tour while I'm in the middle of doing a build, yeah.

Madeline Walden

45:02

Do you have a problem at home where you need a blueprint? Just come find Mike.

Erin Lundy

45:06

I'm not about that.

Mike Davis

45:08

It already gets there.

Erin Lundy

45:10

I have definitely already asked. I think I broke my washing machine at one point and I fix it myself. And then the next day I told my kids to fix my washing machine myself. Just so proud because I was like, you fix things. I can fix things.

Madeline Walden

45:21

You'll understand a hard Yes, yeah.

Mike Davis

45:24

We'll go one. And thank you.

Madeline Walden

45:25

Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Mike.

Erin Lundy

45:26

All right. We are. Okay. And now to heal.

Madeline Walden

45:30

Do you have time to record intros? Or do I have to tell for I would like to go home and even if we can just,

Mike Davis

45:37

you won't be bucks on your intro? Can you?

Madeline Walden

45:47

We're putting it in.

Erin Lundy

45:47

That's gonna be in it for sure. Oh, that's so cool. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Welcome back to the Podcific today. We have on Reed Edwards, read what is your job title here at the Aquarium.

Reed Edwards

46:02

I'm a Life Support Technician. Technician 3.

Erin Lundy

46:08

So that's the highest level of Life Support technician

Reed Edwards

46:10

Right? Yeah, we start at one. Okay, so or a senior

Erin Lundy

46:13

senior Life Support Technician. So what is a life support technician? What do you do? Everything?

Reed Edwards

46:19

Yeah, everything is short answer. I like to compare us to the mechanical side of husbandry. So we focus on everything mechanical, that helps keep the animals alive and thriving. So the heat, heating, cooling for the tanks, the filtration, ozone, pH levels we we contribute on those are kind of our main focuses, then builds, install, repair, whatever needs to be done.

Erin Lundy

46:47

Yeah, you're basically keeping the environment for the animals comfortable and within like, what they can live in. And that can include like chilling water, or heating things up. And the ozone always freaks me out a little bit, because I don't fully understand how it works. But it does. So what does ozone.

Reed Edwards

47:04

So yeah, I mean, to begin with, ozone freaks me out a little bit. We're very careful with ozone. Ozone is an O three molecule. Okay, so oxygens, oh two, we run air through machines that actually break up the oxygen molecules. And recombine them. There's some chemistry or physics or whatever that I don't know, but make them a no three. So it's a super unstable, stable molecule, we push that through a reaction chamber, away from our animals. That's important. Yeah, it is important because what ozone actually does is it attaches to the cells of the stuff that we don't want in the water, and destroys the cells. Okay, because it's unstable. And then we so we go through a process where we have a huge tower for big systems, we inject the ozone, if we run out at a higher level that would be safe for the animals in the water. And then it goes through another tower where we call D gas. The good thing about ozone, it's super unstable, it does not want to be oh three wants to be oh two. So it's really easy to bring it back. So we run it through one tower, and we run it through another tower. And then we put it into the system. So we're cleaning, the bulk of our cleaning is in the first tower, where we're injecting it. And then we have a therapeutic level, I guess, of cleaning in the tank, and ozone, we measure it through ORP oxygen reduction potential. So like the seawater has a natural oxygen reduction, or RP of 350 millivolts. So we'll target the tanks kind of there, depending on the animal sensitivity. So like our mammals, we could run higher than like our sharks.

Erin Lundy

48:43

That's fair. The mammals are pretty hardy. Yeah.

Madeline Walden

48:48

I feel like my eyes are just like, Whoa,

Reed Edwards

48:50

yeah, they're not as sensitive. Yeah. So and then we monitor that all the time, we monitor the water in the system, and we monitor it's in the towers. And we have thresholds, and if it goes out of range, it automatically turns off. It also alerts us if there's a problem, so we could respond.

Erin Lundy

49:09

It's pretty cool that everything can be so automated in like, hey, within these parameters, okay, but outside of that turn off or notify someone to pay attention to. Yeah,

Reed Edwards

49:19

I mean, everything that is important to the animals is automated. Yeah.

Erin Lundy

49:22

And for that reason, you guys have pretty long hours, right? Yeah,

Reed Edwards

49:26

yeah. So we're here 24/7 365

Erin Lundy

49:31

Yeah, yeah, I think that's something people don't always realize is that the system's maintenance takes even more time and commitment than the animal husbandry maintenance can because like, I'm here, usually eight hours a day, sometimes I have longer shifts, if there's needs for animals to you know, I'm acclimating a tadpole you something like that. But someone needs to be here in case something goes wrong 24 hours a day. And so you guys have graveyard shifts. I've come in at three in the morning. And there's life support people here still working. And it's cool to see. But also, this must be some pretty long hours, do you typically get anything going wrong in the middle of the night,

Reed Edwards

50:08

I used to say it comes in clusters. For me, I, when I was on graveyards, it was like, it'd be quiet for a long time. So then you take this role, we have made ongoing maintenance, we flush out tanks, clean, whatever it is. And then part of your shift is just being there in case something goes wrong. A pump decides it doesn't want to work anymore, or whatever it is. And it was like a cluster, you'd go months and it was quiet, you kind of have it easy, get your stuff done, and then all sudden, everything would fall apart. So and we do layers, so we have one to two people on for graveyard shift from 8:30pm till 5:30am. Okay, there's at least one person all the time no matter what. And quite often now we have two people with them. But the supervisor and the manager are also on call. So if they get into a situation, they can't diagnose or fix, then they call the bosses. And sometimes it's just over the phone, hey, do this do that, you know, typically our graveyard or our newer people. So sometimes it's just a matter. They've never seen it. Yeah. So they don't understand how

Madeline Walden

51:13

to be here a long time. Yeah. Oh, just do this. Wiggle this. It'll be fine. Yeah,

Reed Edwards

51:18

I mean, there's been plenty of times I, when I was on grave, I called you know, the supervisor and be like, Oh, that's all falling apart. And then they're like, well do that. Or I'd even there's times as I got more experience, it'd be like, Oh, I'm sorry, I called you. I just realized I actually know, but it's scary in the moment, you know,

Madeline Walden

51:25

and there's so much riding on it, too. And I'm sure I'm sure like all of our all of that leadership there is on the same page, you know, like much rather would receive a call in the middle of the day, then something catastrophic happen. Yeah,

Reed Edwards

51:46

I've never to their credit, you know, but two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, whatever it is. I've never had them say why did you call me for that? It's like, okay, you know, we worked it out, you know? Yeah. But back to sleep or not sometimes. Or I'll come? Yeah, the animal's health and safety is what we do. So if it means someone gets a little less sleep than that's what it means. Yeah, it's worth it.

Erin Lundy

52:13

I like the description of it being sort of the mechanical side of husbandry, because it really is like it's maintaining everything that allows us to have animals that are healthy and happy and function the way that they're supposed to and have an environment that is kind of matching what they're supposed to. What made you want to work in life support at the aquarium or at an aquarium.

Reed Edwards

52:34

Yeah. So that's kind of interesting. I worked in the hobby for a very long time. Okay. Mostly part time. And I'm actually half a semester away from a teaching credential. Yeah, I thought that was my path. And I was working at the time, part time and finishing up school. Yeah. And my oldest child was in kindergarten. Yeah. And he had a little girlfriend. We got to know the mom and the dad wasn't there. He had been gone for a long time. And he came home one day, and she ran up. And I heard her he was a sailor, but he had a huge beard. And like I said, is kind of a smart comment about I didn't know they let you wear beards like that in the Navy. Fortunately, he was a smart aleck like me, and he's made something back. And it turns out, he had just finished a tour doing running underwater robotics, like ecosystems, whatever. And he had started working here in life support graveyard, but he ended up getting a job in Monterey. And he came, so he got the job in Monterey, and he came up to me one day and said, Hey, I'm leaving you love the stuff go apply. So I applied tonight and get the job. Josh, my supervisor actually got the job. And then I got a call a month later and said, Hey, we have an opening. And then I started Wow, not sleeping for five years.

Erin Lundy

54:00

Well, you've worked here for seven as I understand it, so the last few years, you've been getting some sleep? Yeah, what's changed?

Reed Edwards

54:06

Well, so in life support because, you know, graveyards, not a whole lot of fun, you start on graves, and you kind of bide your time. And then as openings come, you take them with my family schedule with kids and stuff. I kind of stayed a little longer most people do. But then I was able to go two days. So now I'm on Excuse me, what we call x shift. I'm on our coverage shift. So I get some flexibility with scheduling but I also help cover when

Reed Edwards

54:38

people are out. Yeah, I feel like you're here all the time. With the gallery

Madeline Walden

54:44

What did you like about graveyard shift? Having kind of the place to yourself?

Reed Edwards

54:49

Yeah, you know, it's, it's it is kind of nice once you get used to it. Honestly. They my team had a bet that I was going to quit the first three months right Oh, yeah, yeah, I was dressed. Seven years, I had kids to feed. So yeah, I think that was the biggest thing. It's stressful because you get your training and and at some point, you have to be by yourself, they just leave you alone, right? And so now you have this building with all the animals, and it's you and a couple of security guards. Yeah. And so it was it was really stressful for quite a while, and then I got used to it. And it is nice in a lot of ways to have the building to yourself. You know, it is really kind of cool to go and look at the exhibits on your downtime. When the animals are, you know, in a state you don't normally see.

Erin Lundy

55:37

Do you see them? Have you ever seen them doing something that like we don't typically observe during the day like nocturnal animals? Or what like what are otters doing at night? Just hitting stuff on wall?

Reed Edwards

55:48

Yeah. Sleeping, I mean, for the most part, they would just kind of be hanging out on the beach. When we started getting the younger ones for a while. We for a while there, we were feeding them with those tubes passing through. So that was really cool.

Erin Lundy

56:02

Yeah, it was nice to have someone who was, you know, had some training and what we were doing and helping to offer the really young otters food at like two in the morning. Yeah,

Reed Edwards

56:10

so we were doing on graveyard, you do two sets of rounds. So right, roughly, right. When you start usually about nine o'clock you started and you walk the whole building, checking every system, every major system, make sure everything's good. And then at two o'clock, you do the rounds on the we call them focus rounds, it's the smaller systems. You know, there's not a, necessarily a gallon size defining which ones are which, but you check those. So that's when we'd feed the otters and they'd hear that door open. On the really just banging on their, you know, like, to me Yeah, so. Yeah, it was pretty cool. I mean, and I get to say I fed sea otters. Yeah, not many people have

Erin Lundy

56:55

done that. No, really not very many at all. And it was I, it was super nice for us. Because at the time, we didn't have as established of a night shift or practice for that. And so we had people who could be trained, and we're here and I don't know, it was really, really nice to have sort of an interdepartmental like, hey, we can rely on these people do this thing if they're already here doing that. And as we learned in our honor episodes, auditors be eaten

Madeline Walden

57:19

so much no matter what time of day, there was something.

Erin Lundy

57:22

So that was really helpful. Awesome. Um, my next question is, what kinds of skills and expertise are required to work as a life support technician? Like, what did you come in with,

Reed Edwards

57:31

you know, I've said before, like, you need to be able to hold a wrench and be willing to learn, there's, it's, it's not our skill set is very diverse. It helps to have like an understanding of water chemistry, and what's going on biologically or chemically. And, you know, it helps to have a basic understanding of how filtration works. But I've learned so much, I mean, I used to install aquariums on the side for people and is so different, you know, so, and part of it is just like, like the plumbing size, it used to be like two inch now we do six inch, and, you know, whatever. And it's different working with that. But I think being willing to learn and having a little kind of just the hands on mechanical experience, you know, not being afraid to use a wrench or whatever. So, yeah,

Erin Lundy

58:25

it feels like a lot of on the job learning really. And like, I see people who come in, and they don't have a ton of experience. But then, you know, a couple months later, I see them doing these incredibly complex things that I can't imagine myself doing. Although I can hold a wrench and I am willing to learn. And Reed has taught me how to do a lot of stuff at the frog air. Yes. So I can stop calling him all the time when I have frog problems. Cool. Well, here's something that I keep hearing people describe like the aquarium is we call it a closed system. What is a closed? Like, what does that mean for us?

Reed Edwards

58:56

Well, we do. So they have some aquariums, and I'm not really familiar with it, where they kind of do a flow through. So they're kind of doing a constant. They're constantly bringing in like new seawater. Okay. And I think that's the primary thing they're talking about. And they're constantly kind of bringing new seawater so they're constantly doing like a water change on their system at varying rates.

Erin Lundy

59:21

I know they're like just part of the ocean, essentially.

Reed Edwards

59:24

Yeah, yeah. And there's, there's some filtration going out that they have to do and there's some things I've talked to some colleagues that work on those trying to understand it better. Yeah, I don't fully know. But with us as a closed system, every one of our systems is isolated from the other system, okay, or not connected. In any shape. We might have a drain line that they go to that is connected, but we make sure that there's no way even on that drain line that water can't get back in. So everyone operates by itself. You know, you might have a few like, the jewels tank in SoCal has the new gallery has For five tanks off of one kind of common song. So you might see that but that's still we consider that one system. Yeah, I think they would do on the husbandry side. So that's interesting. It's

Erin Lundy

01:00:11

all the water chemistry for those tanks is the same because it's the same water. But at the aquarium, everything is sort of operated as individual little systems, which I'm sure means a lot more checking up on things and maintenance in general of like, needing to know which system needs what, and everything is a little bit different, right? Yeah, that's interesting. Is there? And I have a feeling I know the answer to this. We are located on the water if you guys have ever been to the Aquarium of the Pacific, why don't we use our ocean water just from the ocean? Right off shore? And long? Yeah, here in Long? Well, so.

Reed Edwards

01:00:43

Yeah, so we do actually, in two ways. We buy water,

Erin Lundy

01:00:50

okay. So by water, who buys it? How do we buy

Reed Edwards

01:00:54

aquarium buys, there's a company and they pump water in and they filter the water. And then they bring it over on a truck. You see the truck on the side of the road multiple times a day and they pump water into our reservoirs. Pretty cool. So for the building has two reservoirs built in capacity. I think we can hold 240,000 gallons,

Erin Lundy

01:01:14

you know offhand how many gallons total all of the systems together can hold at the aquarium.

Reed Edwards

01:01:21

It's changed. We're, I think we're 1,000,001 or million two.

Erin Lundy

01:01:27

Okay, so we could fill a quarter of the exhibits with a full reservoir, essentially. That's interesting. What's the biggest system here? The green?

Reed Edwards

01:01:35

It's drop drop reef?

Erin Lundy

01:01:36

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Why did I even ask?

Reed Edwards

01:01:40

Trump reef is 335 350. Somewhere in there? Wow. I think we say 350. Yeah. 350. And then predators is the next is 180, I believe. My head what creditors and seals are pretty close.

Erin Lundy

01:01:57

So there's a big exhibit to what type of filtration do you do for a 350 gallon Trump exhibit. So

Reed Edwards

01:02:04

it's not too different than anything, it's the same as most everyone. It's just massive sand filters. So we are. So basically all the systems we run, we're pump we're pulling water out of the tank, and pushing it through our filter or pumps and into the filters into the sand filters. The water comes in the top of the sand filter on a spray bar, it goes through the sand and then out. There's another essentially spray bar there called laterals on the bottom, and then that goes back. It's all pressurized and it goes back through into the system. So that's the main, the ozone is actually considered filtration and then every major exhibit has a protein skimmer on it as well.

Erin Lundy

01:02:57

And the stuff from a protein skimmer we talked about before is called skim eight skimming look at us and knowing things about this oh me brown stuff that comes up. So what is when you have a protein skimmer and you have skin mate? What's that comprised of?

Reed Edwards

01:03:12

Okay, so a protein skimmer, technically is a front foam fractionator.

Erin Lundy

01:03:16

Wow. Sounds like something for coffee. But,

Reed Edwards

01:03:21

ya know, you don't want to put that in your coffee. So what a protein skimmer does is you're injecting air, you're mixing air and water together to get a microbubbles superfine bubble. And that bubble is picking up the proteins that it clings to the proteins like think about when you walk on the beach, and you have that foam, it's the same thing, the crashing the waves does the same thing. So we're replicating that in a controlled area. So we could pull that protein out because when protein breaks down, it turns into ammonia and nitrite nitrate none of that's super great partakes got it. So we're trying to eliminate some of that before it breaks down. Cool. And so that's what's coming is is protein and saltwater and bubbles. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want that. Personally,

Erin Lundy

01:04:08

I just don't want the saltwater protein I confuse. That's fair. So with that, like there are some really, really big exhibits. Are there some exhibits that maybe even aren't that big, but are more difficult to maintain? And what might what might make something harder or easier to maintain?

Reed Edwards

01:04:26

I mean, from our perspective, it I think it's probably the frequency of work orders like eat and so well it comes with that. It's not even that it's the it's the shells, it's the Richmond or so that gets caught to protect our pumps. We have baskets on the front that catch big debris so that we're not destroyed multi $1,000 pumps every other day. And multi 1000 Even five figure multi 1000 Yeah, depending on the system, so we catch those and as those get included, the water stops me mean, yeah. Which is not good for anybody. So then we have to go out and clean it out.

Erin Lundy

01:05:04

They shed a lot because I have

Madeline Walden

01:05:07

realized that they said,

Reed Edwards

01:05:08

I think that surprised me. Honestly, when I first saw like on our big otters exhibit the main exhibit, those gets cleaned. Those baskets get cleaned twice a week. Oh, wow, the back washes, and those are almost three feet long. Wow, wait, eight inches diameter. Yeah, they're substantial. Yeah. And I think that's what surprised me the most is how much they shed. Yeah, it's

Erin Lundy

01:05:30

all hair in there. Oh, my God. It's a lot. It's

Reed Edwards

01:05:32

impressive.

Madeline Walden

01:05:33

Our my shower drain would not be already struggling.

Erin Lundy

01:05:38

We're like rinsing down the deck in there, and it will just hair will come off the walls. You're like you've never been as high up on the wall. Maybe it's like a shower where they like pull it out and they stick it?

Madeline Walden

01:05:49

Well, because how hairy are there they're a million

Erin Lundy

01:05:51

million hairs per square inch. I hear the figure that people will say is like if you imagined a golden retriever, which I always imagined. I have one. And then you shave that golden. Yeah, I specifically imagined my golden retriever. And then you shave them and you condense all of the hair on that dog to one square inch. That's how dead sea otter fur is. And it's so dense because their skin can't ever get wet or else to get really cold. But it also means that they are shedding. So think about my dog shedding. And then I'm like, imagine that was just so many of my dog in my house and how much hair that would be. So thankfully, a lot of it takes place in the water. Thankfully for me, but not thankfully for Reid, who then has to go clean out.

Reed Edwards

01:06:31

Yeah, not as much now that I'm not in graveyards. That's true.

Erin Lundy

01:06:34

I think something that maybe gets overlooked is life support. Equipment is very, very expensive.

Reed Edwards

01:06:40

Yeah, it can be it's it's because we have some of it's because we have parameters like our pumps are cast fiberglass. We can't we have to be very careful with metals because saltwater is so corrosive. So I mean, there at some point, we have to have metal but then we try and protect it. And then we use very high grade stainless steel every time we can because it will break down slower. I

Madeline Walden

01:07:03

think a lot of your job is like things actively working against you.

Erin Lundy

01:07:08

When you put it that way.

Reed Edwards

01:07:09

Yeah, I mean, salt water is corrosive, it's gonna break down everything we do at some point. Yeah. But you know,

Erin Lundy

01:07:16

it's really interesting. Well, I also had heard that when we are getting our salt water, sometimes the intake is from the river and you have to clean out the screens to prevent you know, their screens prevent all this weird stuff from getting into the saltwater. What are some of the weirdest things you found cleaning the screens out there?

Reed Edwards

01:07:33

The screens themselves are usually just like muddy gross. We might have some crustacean or something on there that we try and return to their environment. But you know, I mean, it's sitting in in the river harbor water and in that detritus mud for so and the screens are. They're not like a window screen right there. What are they about six foot long, four foot tall. Oh, wow. And they're all stainless steel in their ribbed with their stainless steel. And it's like a PVC board star board. That kind of gives the structure but the screen itself kind of looks like the radiator in your car. Okay, right. So it's really small, fine thing so and they're 150 200 pounds. They're not not not fun. But so we have to pull those out. So we find that it's mostly in the river we find things like we had one time we were working down, it's under up here. And we're working there and there was like this abandoned doll. Oh, it's so scary already. Yeah, just like sitting there staring at us the whole time. What appear it was kind of on the rock on the jetty work, but it was just kind of like floating there, by the way. Don't like yeah, it was not it was kind of little, you know, I mean, yeah. Kind of watching your with its eyes staring at you

Erin Lundy

01:08:56

just like one eye close.

Reed Edwards

01:08:58

Yeah, I mean, you know, made it entertaining. Well read

Erin Lundy

01:09:01

Hello. Don't touch my screen. Well, that's horrifying. That was not the story I wanted.

Reed Edwards

01:09:09

Those screens could change. So there's four screens. To understand how much buildup it is. We have I'm sorry, there's eight screens, four sides on a box. And those every six months we do screens, but we do one side at a time. So by the time we get to them, they've been in the water for over a year. Oh, wow. So they're there. They're funky. Yeah,

Erin Lundy

01:09:31

and there's little dolls watching you and there's those watching? Yeah, okay. My, I wanted to know, and it sounds like I already know, what is your favorite animal at the aquarium? And then what is your least favorite animal to take care of from a life support perspective?

Reed Edwards

01:09:46

Yeah, I mean, I guess the because of the frequency of maintenance. The auditors are the ones that are I'll say most complained about fair, or most complained about.

Erin Lundy

01:09:58

I'm gonna tell them

Reed Edwards

01:09:59

otters. Oh, they know.

Erin Lundy

01:10:02

Like, we're fine. As you're feeding them, please stop shoving things down that

Reed Edwards

01:10:06

that's one of the beauties of graveyard. You can complain out loud. It's true. They don't. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Erin knows I have an affinity for the frogs,

Erin Lundy

01:10:15

which frogs Reed?

Reed Edwards

01:10:16

Well, the mountain frogs.

Erin Lundy

01:10:17

Yes. Thank you. That's what I needed to hear. Next episode, we'll

Madeline Walden

01:10:21

hear all about them. Yeah. Frogs, our

Erin Lundy

01:10:23

season finale is gonna be a highlight on the conservation work that we do with mountain yellow legged frogs. But something that people might not know is that Reid actually, with some help, obviously built those systems from scratch all by himself. It was fun, which was really cool to watch and sort of be a part of. And now every time I have questions, I'm like, read what happened? What's going on? What does this valve do? And how can like I turned it slightly weirdly. And so it's really nice to have someone who has that much insight into what that system is supposed to look like, here on site, because there'll be times when someone bumped something, and the flow is just almost too low for the chiller to function. That was last week. And and then we fixed it, because Reed thankfully knows exactly which valve got bumped and knows what everything's supposed to look like. So you built an entire room for endangered frogs.

Reed Edwards

01:11:10

Yeah, that's the cool part of the job. Yeah, right. I mean, I mean, there's, there's the bragging part, like I did that. But it's cool that I'm actually returning helping, like helping a bigger thing, right. Yeah. I mean, and it's me, but it's my team. Yeah, I work with amazing people. I'm really honored to do that.

Erin Lundy

01:11:29

It's true. It was always fun. When the project was like sort of being built and the room was being built that I would come in sometimes. And then you guys would just be like, you know, working together. And like having a good time in there. And also can come in, I can't help at all. But yeah, and then we had our third system come up and running. And so you guys were working in there. It's really nice. And there it is probably some of the cleaning. Like I could never plumb anything that cleanly. But you can tell that like from its inception just so well planned. And I attribute a lot of the success of that project to all of the work that life sport did to make that room so successful. And the maintenance never ends a little less than the otters. But we have like our our O system and our di systems that those membranes need to get replaced all the time. Later today, they come in. And yeah, I mean, we have really clean water in there, they have UV sterilizers on them. They have chillers that are up in the attic, draws a lot of power, electricity, just keep everything cold. It's like 90 degrees outside today. And the frogs are chillin in there at 60 degrees with water. That's 50. And I'm like must be nice.

Madeline Walden

01:12:34

But a life I think it's great. You know, that's so much care and thought put into something that our public will never see. They'll never be able to go into that room.

Erin Lundy

01:12:43

I'll make sure this

Madeline Walden

01:12:45

virtual tour. That's fine. Do that. Welcome to my crib

Erin Lundy

01:12:48

mountain. Oh, can we do that?

Madeline Walden

01:12:51

Coming to a tiktok near you?

Erin Lundy

01:12:54

Well, I wanted to touch a little bit on the Southern California gallery. And essentially, the aquarium turned 25 this year. And does that mean that some of our infrastructure and our plumbing is also 25 years old? And what does that mean? Are you older?

Reed Edwards

01:13:09

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I guess depending on because they started building before 25 Yeah, and had water in I wasn't around so I don't know.

Erin Lundy

01:13:19

26 years ago,

Reed Edwards

01:13:20

I was Yeah. But yeah, it is older. It's so yeah, with age like an old car everything things need repair and update and stuff. But then we have a lot of stuff like the Aquarium one of the things we do we invest in quality plumbing and pumps in, in our valves, but if you go on top, we were talking about the tropical exhibit big drop. I know we have 30 names for it because it's been around for a brief

Erin Lundy

01:13:51

drop and from

Reed Edwards

01:13:52

the life support perspective, every system has a number Okay. And so do you know them by law? I know all the major systems Yeah, what's orders orders 341 Let's drop drop is 443 Let's penguins. Penguins is 261

Erin Lundy

01:14:07

This is my favorite game. I did this with Josh Wagner on the scientific names of all the jellies but it's so funny to me when people have this like incredibly niche knowledge that has and then they just know it like like I don't know what those numbers mean. But it's so quickly you could also be lying and I would have no idea

Reed Edwards

01:14:25

well you could you could fact check me but yeah, I can't be like like I was ya know the all the tropical galleries are for hundreds Okay, all the northern galleries are three hundreds all the SoCal galleries are to hundreds

Erin Lundy

01:14:37

this mountain frogs have a number. No, we just number one

Reed Edwards

01:14:44

and Ey lf one mi L F two. So because those correspond to points on our sequencer, on our computer, how in our monitoring system, so we can't I mean, well, I guess we can but none of us want to type out Out. Tropical. Yeah, free flow filter flow. Yeah. Which is one of the things we monitor all the time. So, it so we might, it's 443, you know, so we get we monitored by or get a notification if there's an issue 443, it will say like f f 4430, in which case means there's no flow going through tropical reef, it means there's something wrong. And we need to go figure out why

Erin Lundy

01:15:27

you know how, like in movies and TV shows when you see someone in like a security office, and it's like all the screens up. That's what I imagined you guys doing with all of the different like data points for like flow, temperature, all those things it is

Reed Edwards

01:15:38

so I mean, so the technician on duty, depending on the shift, right, carries a phone as a phone that's attached to our Siemens server, or Siemens computer. And then throughout the day, they get notifications for multiple, you know, temperatures, if a temperatures, most of our temperatures are set up. So anything more than two degrees above or below what we tell the computer we want that temperature to be? Well, it's going to tell us that there's a problem. Then filter flows dependent on the system and sensitivities and whatnot, it's the same thing we say, okay, you know, normally this runs at, whatever, 200 gallons a minute. So if you get 250, there's a problem tell us or if you get to 300, there's a problem tell us. And then a lot of them also the levels if the level is too low, or whatever. So the technician on duty, the primary will have that phone, and they get notification throughout the day. On top of that we have a computer and you go into the graphics page. And we can bring up any system in the building and take a look at it and at the minimum know how much flow is going through it and what temperature it is. That's interesting. So larger and more complex, then it gets more and more

Erin Lundy

01:16:54

more and more things. I can't tell you how many times I've done a water change with like slightly warmer water. And then someone immediately knows and calls me and it's like what's happening out in mountain frogs? I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it. But it's awesome. Because if something was going wrong, that would be you know, but then usually, if I forget to tell you guys, I'm doing that, then I'm just like, I'm so sorry. To worry anyone about what's going on up here.

Reed Edwards

01:17:16

Yeah, and we adjust those thresholds based on the sensitivity and the animals. Right. So we're gonna handle a little better.

Erin Lundy

01:17:21

Yeah, or like a mammal is gonna be just fine. You know,

Reed Edwards

01:17:25

I mean, if they I think seals is like 62, I think is our we call it setpoint. Our target temperature. So you know, seals is at 64 for a little bit there, whatever. But the mountain frogs expecially, because there's so at risk. Yeah, we monitor them pretty close very

Erin Lundy

01:17:42

closely. Yeah. And I'm so sorry, for all the times you've had to go. You're not the only Aaron, what's going on? I'm like, I'm sorry, I was doing a lot of change. And I forgot. Well, I know that we just reopen or we just reopen. I guess it's true. Imagined reimagined our Southern California gallery. What involvement did you have in construction of the new gallery?

Reed Edwards

01:18:04

Wow. So this was it was kind of fun on honestly, this was the first time I did design, not designed the tank, right? So I was given the tank parameters for beauty in the deepest the name of it, I was given the tank parameters. So how many gallons? What if they're going to run us up? And then they it was like, Okay, now make it work. So we went out and it's not just me, it's, you know, sit down with the team and conversations. And so we start to figure out how much flow we need to run through there. On our perspective, a lot of that flow is how much do we need to turn over that tank to properly filter it, right. So you know, those animals that happens to be a coral tank, so they need a little bit more flow? But our focus on that is mostly like how much do we need to turn on the filter. And then whatever, you know, there was some requests for some come on components from the husbandry team. So they gave it to this and then we start with a line drawing. So we literally take a piece of paper paper and map the way are the water is going to flow through the tank through the filters through the pot. Well, it's tank pumps filter, that one has a bio tower and a protein skimmer and then back into the tank. So we just it's, it's not like okay, in three feet, we're gonna do that. It's just literally Yeah, this is the route it's gonna take. And then we go into the space and start imagining what it's going to look like. And then order all our stuff. So we did that. I was kind of asked to lead that tank and then kneel lead the oil grass or one of our other tech three and Josh, our supervisor did the oil rig is I think the same and then seagrass rain mountain meadows is The Josh lead that one. So and when you do the big build, you kind of need a point. Person. Yeah, like we definitely work together. Yeah, we all complement each other. But you need the point person to have a vision. Yeah. So we did that. We ordered our components, most of them anyway. And then when the tanks got here, we started putting them together. I mean, attaching things, gluing it together. Yeah. laying it out, trying to figure out how it

Erin Lundy

01:20:32

works and how to get really big tanks and really small spaces, how to get really big, heavy tanks into really small spaces. I heard with the eelgrass tank in particular that there was once it was sort of in the building, getting it on to where it was going to eventually sit was interesting. I heard that involve some soap. There was some so what happened there?

Reed Edwards

01:20:55

So you marine Meadows? Yeah, is the new name right? That takes 30 feet long. Yeah, it's

Erin Lundy

01:21:02

a big tank.

Reed Edwards

01:21:03

I think five feet wide. It's it is it's amazing. And very heavy. Yeah. So I wanted to stick to the concrete pads. So Tom actually came up with the idea to use soap and it breaks the friction up a little Yeah. And so we spread soap on the concrete and then slid 3000 pounds of tank. By you know, you have to push it, you get to the point where you just have to literally lean on it and push it. And it slid pretty well. I mean, you know, I tried to do slip and slide with this

Madeline Walden

01:21:38

beautiful, beautiful exhibit. Definitely. I heard about kind of getting it in there. And seems like it was well worth Yeah.

Reed Edwards

01:21:44

Yeah.

Erin Lundy

01:21:45

I mean, it was it took to scoot it in. Yeah.

Reed Edwards

01:21:47

It's like anything, you know, in the moment. Sometimes it's frustrating. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's really cool to go back and look and see, you know, and it's not just us. It's we got the water moving through it. Yeah. And then husbandry came through and made a beautiful exhibit. Yeah. You know,

Madeline Walden

01:22:03

it's it's wild to think to you know, or an aquarium that's 25 years old. We have a couple of stories here. We are redoing the bottom floor. Yeah. We kind of starting over from scratch. So it's not like we could get a crane to display a list of things. Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah, that would have been the first round of the aquarium being built.

Erin Lundy

01:22:19

I think there's about a Sadly, no,

Madeline Walden

01:22:21

we got a roof now.

Erin Lundy

01:22:22

Yeah. Yeah. Can't just knock down the CLI and put a new tank in, I guess.

Reed Edwards

01:22:27

Well, we did. I mean, we didn't knock it down. But when we did, or did we drain that?

Erin Lundy

01:22:32

Oh, yeah. That was when you first started. It was yeah, it was still pretty. That was in between my internship and when I got hired. And so I was an intern I saw one exhibit came back a few days, or a few years later, and I was like, what's happening? Why is it so different than yours? And that seemed like it would have been a really big project, too.

Reed Edwards

01:22:49

Yeah, that was huge. It was kind of cool scene.

Madeline Walden

01:22:51

It was done pretty quickly, too. From what I remember. Yeah. A whole new exhibit to be exhibited. renovated? Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

Reed Edwards

01:22:59

the company that we contract with that does a lot of our rock work does great work. Yeah. So but that that tunnel part is actually two pieces of acrylic. Yeah. And so they had to strap it and hold it is

Erin Lundy

01:23:11

it's held by the water pressure, right. Like, partially? Yeah. Yeah.

Reed Edwards

01:23:15

I mean, it's designed partially to hold the water pressure, and then it's basically siliconed in Yeah, so so cool. In fact, that's one of the life support things is when that leaks, we have to dive,

Erin Lundy

01:23:25

I remember. Yeah, I remember you guys diving in there. And then the sea lions were like, What is all this stuff you're doing in here and this being a little bit of a nuisance, but that's okay. Diving is part of the

Madeline Walden

01:23:36

sort of life support. Yes, it is. Yeah, it isn't there and fixing and fixing

Reed Edwards

01:23:41

and figuring and so because silicone only lasts so long. That's our seems so that's one of the things that we started take over. Are they I haven't dove here yet. It's got certified and haven't had my yay Yes. Awesome.

Erin Lundy

01:23:55

Madeline too, but

Madeline Walden

01:23:57

oh, yeah, almost. Oh, sorry. Close

Reed Edwards

01:24:01

that or just inspections. To check out dives or on occasion they actually my husband has more but they'll drill holes in in like trop Yeah, to put the corals and corals and stuff. So or buff acrylic. You know, we buffed out otters when we bought all the acrylic and otters

Erin Lundy

01:24:19

in the otter and it looks great. That was when we were closed during COVID We would get the otter spec and we had like several life support staff come in and as little raft in the scene, the otter exhibit, it doesn't look like your raft will fit in there. There's just all these people on a raft just like buffing and then as you buff you push away from the wall and so they have to like just keep coming back towards so it really it was fun to watch. And it looks really nice for a little bit and then the Otters decided it was time to really wreak some havoc again, it still looks nicer, but man the Otters really do some damage. Appreciate that. Getting some good photos and I know Reed doesn't appreciate the Otters just destroying everything

Reed Edwards

01:25:00

Yeah, the challenge of acrylic it's very, very strong. Yeah. Right. As far as like, holding back. Yeah, that waterway I can crack soft. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, it doesn't take a lot in otters have good nails nail lines do it too.

Erin Lundy

01:25:14

It's tasteful sometimes if there's

Reed Edwards

01:25:16

part of it. Yeah. But it's, you know, you can't put glass on that side. Yes.

Erin Lundy

01:25:23

And you also can't expect to have animals in an exhibit and have them not be animals and do the things that they're doing. And so everything is cyclical, and maintenance for the reason of, hey, they're gonna do weird stuff. So we just have to be.

Reed Edwards

01:25:37

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's just part of it. Yeah, it was kind of fun.

Erin Lundy

01:25:41

I actually really liked seeing you guys on a raft in there because it was fun to work with.

Reed Edwards

01:25:45

At some point, I was on a ladder in there. It was in a wetsuit on a ladder working. Yeah. And the yellowtail kept coming up and really foggy my leg and they don't respond to please stop. Yeah, they just keep doing it.

Erin Lundy

01:25:57

Well, they're underwater, so they actually couldn't hear you. But if you yelled directly into the water,

Reed Edwards

01:26:02

I was trying really hard not to put my face in the water.

Erin Lundy

01:26:05

Especially otters. It's offered down there. Yeah. Well, my last question about SoCal is like, that was a huge project. It took months and months and months, from planning to, you know, getting all the tanks in place and making sure everything was ready. What is the most fulfilling part? Like once you are done, and once you can step back and take a look? What do you like the most about that?

Reed Edwards

01:26:26

Yeah, it was, I think the best part there was. It was like two weeks ago, okay. I think we had just opened, it was right before we did like the Saturday kind of soft. It was a Thursday before that. And there was I don't know who Josh was here. And a couple of us are here. It was super cool. Like we all just kind of, because Josh, Josh had said earlier that day, he said, You know, I realized we're done when we say we're done. Yeah, right. Everything was running. You know, there's, there's gonna be tweaks on that front. That's how it goes. But everything was running. It was sustainable for animals, like like, it was there. There were animals already getting in there and stuff. And so we went to see, that's it, because we don't look at that we don't get to see that. So I mean, we can we they don't we're not prohibited. But but that's our game behind. Yeah. I mean, the joke is that we're kind of not friendly. So we stay behind the scenes. But you know, our job is behind the scenes. And we focus on that. So sometimes we forget to look at the front of the what we're contributing to. And there was a moment where it was, I think, my favorite moment of that, where we did have that, like we all went out and we're just looking. And we paused at like what we contributed to and it was super cool. That is pretty cool feeling. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's fun. And my kids have been through and it's like, you know, and I hear them tell their friends like my dad

Erin Lundy

01:27:56

did. Oh,

Reed Edwards

01:27:59

it's kind of cool. I love that. But it's not I mean, I It's not me, it's all of

Erin Lundy

01:28:03

us. Yeah. It's a great team. Yes. And nothing of that scale could be done by one individual person. You know, everything has to be done as a team. And yeah, that's a really cool feeling to just stand there with the people that worked so hard for months with you. Yeah. And to be able to be like, we did this. It's done. We can do our stuff for a little bit.

Reed Edwards

01:28:22

Yeah, no, I am. I am truly honored to work with this team. Like, because we complement I mean, there's times when any job right, you get stuck. Yeah. You know, you've been plumbing and cutting pipes for days and get stuck. And you can't even see where you're going. Yeah. And so when I walk in, just do that, and then you go so

Erin Lundy

01:28:39

clear, all of a sudden,

Reed Edwards

01:28:42

will take over for each other. Sometimes it's like, just, you know, I know you need a walk or, or there's things I'm not good at that other people are, you know, and so, you know, we just take over and step in. It's really cool.

Erin Lundy

01:28:55

That's awesome. Well, that was a really good note to end on sort of the main body of the episode, but we do have some questions that our social media listeners would like to ask you so Madeline's going to take over a little bit and ask you some of these questions. Some of them are great.

Madeline Walden

01:29:10

And there's some really, I mean, social media, Instagram, you always show up and ask some really thought provoking questions. Were very appreciative of it. Did you have any pets growing up that led you to kind of want to study and build and work in this industry?

Reed Edwards

01:29:24

Hey, yeah, well in the Yeah, I mean, we always had dogs, of course, but I've always been in water around water and outside and doing things so like, Yeah, I think I it was natural for me to start doing aquariums. I can't tell you I mean, when I was living at home at one point where I had some money to spend like six tanks in my bedroom. So my future

Erin Lundy

01:29:47

Yeah, I'm well on my way. Yeah.

Reed Edwards

01:29:50

It's like the opposite of the crazy cat lady. I had like the

Erin Lundy

01:29:53

the sane fish guy. The very sane fishy. Crazy cat lady sane fish man.

Reed Edwards

01:30:00

Nobody will actually argue that I'm doing

Madeline Walden

01:30:05

I love that. What in your career here at the Aquarium has been the most difficult exhibit to plumb? Well,

Reed Edwards

01:30:13

um, I don't know. I mean, it's like every one and we hit points. But it's like what I was saying we we work together so well. It's like there's some the oil rig exhibit. I didn't really plan that helps them on it. But amazes me because they put a lot of stuff in a very tight area. Yeah. Yeah, I for me, it's like, all of them at some point. have made me absolutely crazy. Okay. I don't want to do this anymore. I will. Yeah, you know, but I can't think of like a specific one that was super aggravating, you know, beyond just the normal stuff.

Erin Lundy

01:30:57

Normal aggravating.

Madeline Walden

01:30:58

Yeah. How do you measure things like salinity, nitrates, alkaline levels. alkalinity, alkalinity? Thank you. And other important things,

Reed Edwards

01:31:09

we open our email and get our water quality report. Yeah, we're super lucky. Here we are, we have a full lab three lab technicians, they monitor so and then throughout the week, different things, there's a pretty consistent schedule of what's gonna get measured, measured, and reported. So most time it's that we will, if we're having issues go and record like do is dissolved oxygen isn't one thing, if we have issues with a piece of equipment that we can't repair right away, we have handheld monitors. And then, yeah, this Linnaean alkalinity is all through the lab, and we check the reports, and then make adjustments and even that, yeah, even that comes through generally a request, you know, we might notice that something and then talk to whoever's in charge of that exhibit and say, hey, you know, let's go no, so

Madeline Walden

01:32:02

what's the most important thing to consider when constructing a habitat?

Reed Edwards

01:32:08

I mean, it comes down to what the animals need, right? So if we're, you know, we're going to look at, if it's like a temperate or a cold water, or a tropical, and then you know, it's the size of that so we could space things out. The filtration is, you know, we have we run, we tried to run like a one to two times x, like we're trying to turn that take at least one or two times an hour. Yeah, the total volume tank, at least minimum through the filtration. And then it's, it's going there, but then we have to look at like, like crabs is going to take a different amount of chilling, right? Because they're 48 degrees or 50 degrees, or GPO Giant Pacific Octopus is 48 degrees. So we're going to have to put a lot of chilled water into that or into the chiller mechanism. And it will require more than something that is more temperate. Yeah, no. So it's, I don't know that there's one important right, I guess hold water.

Erin Lundy

01:33:15

First thing first doesn't hold the water.

Reed Edwards

01:33:17

Let's fix that. But yeah, it's it's because it's, you know, you have to look what's going in? Yeah. So that's what it is just built into that species or that general climate? Probably.

Erin Lundy

01:33:29

Do you think with like, the chilled water and stuff sometimes I'll see read working in seemingly the most random part of the court, like the middle of a hallway, and like on a ladder, and I'm just like, What are you doing? Like, how could that possibly be, but if you are ever visiting, and you look up, there's pipes everywhere, and everything is really interconnected. And then at all, a lot of the filtration is outside in our service yard. And so because of that, it's your job to also know what is connected to ensure they're labeled buttons, how to follow things and sort of like what to look for. And there's, I think, like two weeks ago, you were in the hallway on a ladder by our food kitchen. And I was like, hello, what is it what's happening up there? And that was for air conditioning purposes. See just thinks what,

Madeline Walden

01:34:15

like a map of all the pipes in the

Erin Lundy

01:34:17

brain. Right, my brain. It's called reads brain

Reed Edwards

01:34:21

we have so yeah, we have some blueprints. And they show you some things. But one of the things I really when we bring in new Tech's and if I'm spent when I'm spending time training, one of the things I feel like one of the most important things is learning how to trace systems. Yeah, so literally, you point out a pump. All right, water goes in, water goes out, it's pretty. You could tell pretty quickly where the water goes in the pump where it comes out. And then I always I because I do it. Point out that and trace the plumbing with your finger, how it goes and learn how it moves through the system. Right And then if you we, I try and start them on a smaller system that's worked for me. Some people will do the line drawings, like I was talking about earlier. I don't love that. But it's, you know, it needs to be done. So I do a lot of it with my finger. And at some points, your, you know, it goes in the wall there, and it comes out the wall there. So must run over that office or through here or whatever, because I know it's moving that way it goes. So there are some guesses. There's schematic somewhere, but usually in the moment, you're just kind of pointing in and walking around and following something. Yeah, it's weird. Because you're, you're looking at the pipes. For whatever reason, your mouth falls open every time. We're walking around with your mouth gaping open pointing,

Madeline Walden

01:35:45

there goes life support,

Reed Edwards

01:35:46

which is why our reputation is, but what you're asking about we're working on are the cooling for the building. And the cooling for the animals is the same system. So it's a big, we chill water down we have at any given time. When everyone's working in happy, we have 42 degree water coming from our plant, pumping throughout the building. And then we run valves in different places on each system or in they're called Air handlers. And that's we blow air through it, or we have plates. And one side is that really cold water. And the other side is the system water. And that's how we control the temperature for those animals. That's really cool. So it goes hand in hand. Yeah.

Madeline Walden

01:36:35

Okay, last question is if we had an unlimited budget and space, what if we had an unlimited budget and space wasn't an issue? What exhibit would you like to build?

Erin Lundy

01:36:45

What would you put in it?

Reed Edwards

01:36:47

I think what I put in it, I don't know if I'd want to build

Madeline Walden

01:36:50

two different things. I've always liked a project manager.

Reed Edwards

01:36:54

I think sharks are super cool. Like, that's part of the reason why I wanted to dive here. So yeah, I'm sharks. So it'd be awesome to have like a massive shark. Yeah, bit. Like Unlimited, I don't know that I necessarily want to build it. It's, it's, the bigger the pipe, the harder it is to glue. And gluing is a chemical reaction. And it wants to see, you put the pipe together. And then it starts kind of melt and causes and it pushes back out. And the bigger the pipe, the harder you have to push back in. I'm not little and sometimes I have to lay on him to hold in place like a lot of manual labor to build. Yeah, it's exhausting. And that's for like a four six inch pipe. Yeah, a big big shark exhibit is like 10 1214 edge. Yeah. You're just getting pushed back. Yeah, you have to you have to use mechanical devices to hold them. I mean, it would be super cool to contribute. I wouldn't be sad if someone did. Someone built it for you back and appreciate.

Madeline Walden

01:37:56

Yeah, there you go. That's awesome. Cool. That's all of our social media questions.

Erin Lundy

01:38:00

Thanks, Reid. This is I have learned so much about your job. And I already thought I had a decent understanding of it. And there's so much more that you guys do. And I mean, the life support is sort of like the backbone of the aquarium. You know, like, maybe under appreciated when people are talking about the origins of the aquarium. Like there's a heart there's a brain but the backbone, you're supporting everything that we support. Yeah, yeah, just I guess if you Yeah. But it is awesome. What you guys are doing and we really do have a cool team. I feel bad every time I have to call you to be like I blew something up, but someone always comes and fixes it. And what an amazing resource to have on hand 24/7 to know everything about

Reed Edwards

01:38:41

what we're doing and don't feel bad when you blow it up. We are professional gamblers. But we most of the time enjoy.

Erin Lundy

01:38:49

I think read just likes coming over to the frog areas and then also seeing frogs while fixing things. Yeah,

Reed Edwards

01:38:54

there's you know, there's far that's a good view. That's check it out. You know, it's just what I have to crawl into really small space. Oh, the favorite game of life sport is to see what we could stuff. Six three have read into.

Erin Lundy

01:39:07

Go, go go. Well, that's awesome. Thank you so much for this awesome interview. I mean, I this has been great. I've learned so much. I didn't know most of that stuff, unfortunately. And I think we got a highlight, you know, something that literally supports

Madeline Walden

01:39:22

me at the aquarium definitely look up, check out those pipes.

Erin Lundy

01:39:25

And then see read follow

Madeline Walden

01:39:32

perfect. Cool. Thanks so much. Awesome. Thank you. Aquarium of the Podcific is brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific a 501 C three nonprofit organization in 2023. The aquarium celebrates 25 years of connecting millions of people worldwide to the beauty and wonder of our ocean planet. Head to aquarium of pacific.org to learn more about our 25th anniversary celebration. Keep up with the aquarium on social media. At aquarium Pacific on tick tock Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Erin Lundy

01:40:04

This podcast is produced by Erin Lundy, Madeline Walden and Scott Shaw. Our music is by Andrew Wright's MA and our podcast art is by Brandy Kenny. Special thanks to Cecile Fisher and Anita vias and our audio visual and education departments. And to all of our amazing podcast guests are taking time out of their day to talk about the important work that they do. But cific wouldn't be possible without the support of the aquarium stoners, members, guests and supporters. Thanks for listening

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