And I'm Madeline Walden and this is Aquarium of the Podcific. A podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, Southern California's largest aquarium.
Join us as we learned alongside the experts in animal care, conservation and more.
Welcome back to Aquarium of the Podcific.
I'm Erin Lundy, conservation coordinator for mammals and birds and Animal Care Specialist and
I'm Madeline Walden, the aquariums digital content and community manager. Today we are learning all about diving at the aquarium. Erin, have you ever dove at the aquarium before? Yeah.
It historically it was part of my job. Not as much recently there's frog habitats tend to dive deep enough to need that. But when I was primarily a Marine Mammal Care keeper, caretaker, caregiver, my goodness when I was at the mall, primarily to care for marine mammal collection. One of the things that people don't realize is that diving is how we clean their house. Yeah, and we have a vacuum like an underwater vacuum. vacuuming up all the things that are
be needed to be vacuum. Food goes in
food comes out. Yeah. And the best thing about diving in with our seals and sea lions other than getting a chance to see how massive they look underwater is sometimes you get to find a little whiskers and it's Oh, they have really got his crush on harbor seal whiskers when you find them are different than California. Sealine whiskers, California Ceylon whiskers look like a spaghetti like a dry spaghetti. My hardware still whiskers are the cutest thing ever, because they have this spiral structure all around. And that makes them more sensitive to water currents flowing over them and helps them understand the surrounding. So that's the best part about diving in with the seals and sea lions. But treasure Yeah, all the treasure you find it within the poop.
That's awesome. Well, I am currently in the process of learning how to scuba dive. And I'm really excited to get into our exhibits because it just it seems so magical. I can't wait. I haven't
been in a lot of our exhibits. I've been in our sea otter habitat. I've been in penguins. I've been in our seals and sea lions, but our DSO Rachel gets to do all of it and then some and then also gets to teach people how to dive in all of those different habitats. So Madeline's scuba certification is going to allow us to do TikToks from inside and see fish real close. Rachel is our dive safety officer also known as a DSO. And she's worked at the aquarium for quite some time. And we're very lucky to have her it is not easy diving. Diving is super technical, can be dangerous,
so much safety protocols that she has to manage and really be thinking about the entire time that she's working, and probably when she's not working, honestly, who doesn't
think a lot of brainspace when they're not working. But she is wonderful, and she is one of the most enthusiastic and sweet DSOs that we could ever ask for. So without further ado, let's have Rachel.
Rachel, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
Hi, good afternoon. So happy to be here.
Yay. Can you tell us a little bit about your job here at the Aquarium? How long have you been here?
Yeah, do so. Um, I am the dive safety officer of aquarium operations. I have been here for about 11 and a half years. Really? Yes. So I started when I was 20 years old. And I remember getting the call that I got the job and I laid back on my bed and I thought all of my worries that I've ever had in my life are solved. I got a job in scuba diving, which is kind of a hard thing to do. You know, it's a luxury sport. It's super fun. You know, everybody wants to you know, scuba dive at the Aquarium of the Pacific Yeah. And get paid to do it. And so and so that's what I'm that's what I do. But more so actually, I manage all the people that are diving at the Aquarium of the Pacific, I don't actually get in the water as much as I would like to. But I certainly do get in to do some trainings or to to do some fun stuff or some special events. But mainly what I am in charge of is making sure that the dive program is being conducted in a safe manner that all of the equipment is safe and in good condition and looks nice and pretty. And I onboard all of the volunteer scuba divers and manage all of the diving that goes on day to day in the exhibits. One One of a team of six people that are all paid employees and everybody else that you see that's diving in the exhibits. They either staff members and aquarists or volunteers. Yeah, awesome.
Well, let's talk a little bit about your career or just your life before the aquarium have. How long have you been diving for?
So I'm super lucky. I grew up locally here. I grew up like in Seal Beach and my dad got me into scuba diving right when I turned 12 years old, which is the absolute youngest you can possibly be I knew that I wanted to breathe underwater ever since I had a mermaid Barbie. You know then scuba diver Barbie in the bathtub or what have you. And so I was um I grew up going to Catalina with my family and snorkeling and that super, super cold water and only really wanted to do was fly underneath the surface. And so I got certified on my 12th birthday. It was it was so fun and since then I've had some additional trainings I did an ROP class in high school as a senior where I got to go to a different high school and get some more scuba training. ROP Yeah, what does that ROP I think? What does it stand for? It's like, second extracurricular class, it allowed me to get a pathway cord in high school. Oh, that's a thing. So got a marine biology pathway chord. And so then I went to school, I went to school at Cal State Long Beach, I got my degree in marine biology, my Bachelor of Science and all the while I mean really I started working here when I was 20. And so all of my previous dive training kind of came in my teen years. And then all of the more additional training that have gotten like divemaster and instructor has been while been while I've been here at the Aquarium so my experience diving for a long time, as well as I was a junior lifeguard so I spent a lot of time in the ocean for really helped me get the job the initial administration job here for the dive program. And then I've been growing and crawling up the ladder slowly ever since I mean, swimming up the ladder. It's a ladder. No see my little crab like little crab, you know, going up ladder and a big wave comes and we call that COVID. Bottom rock right? Start all over.
It's funny that I was like, oh, real life mermaid you're like I'm a little crab working my way up.
Can you kind of give a rundown on what is a dive master? What are kind of the levels that you have to go through to get to where you are now. Okay, yeah,
no, great question. So, um, if you've never been scuba diving before, you can get yourself in the water in two ways. You can try something called like a discover dive, where you go to a dive shop and say, hey, I want you to take me scuba diving, I just want to get underwater in the ocean as quickly as I can and will do. They'll teach you how to do it, you can do it one time. If you want to be able to do it yourself, when you go on vacation somewhere else is like I know how to do this and I want to do it here, then you would need a certification. The first level is an Open Water Diver certification, it takes about two to three weeks, there's some pool work, there's some ocean work, and you're gonna get that done with a some with an instructor that's at a dive shop near you somewhere and that shops are everywhere. They're not only near the ocean, they're definitely inland as well, certainly, oh yeah. So just Google a dive shop near you. And there will be an instructor that can teach you something. So once you get your basic open water certification, that is by far the hardest part. You also don't need to own your own gear in order to get that certification, you can rent the gear, I highly recommend it because not only is the gear expensive, storing it is even more expensive. And so it's kind of delicate, too. Yeah, you know, it's finally wanted
to maintain
you, you don't want to buy your own gear until you love doing this. You're doing it every month, you know, and so um, so you rent the gear, get yourself open water certified. And if you do truly love it, there are tons of dive clubs that are just you know, recreational people that want to go diving and figure out when they can all find the time to do it. And so that's how you find your dive buddies because you never want to go diving alone. After that, there are a couple other levels. There's an advanced diver, which you do, I believe it's like five specialty dives. We do like a night diving or navigation or boat diving, just more specialty things that make you in advance that usually takes about one weekend. Then you take another weekend and you can get your rescue diver certification, which teaches you not only how to rescue someone from the water, but more importantly, how to think so that you prevent a rescue from ever needing to happen. And so it's a lot of just situational awareness training. So that's a rescue diver certification. That is the certification that is required for all of our volunteer divers. So it's technically the third level of certification. But so yeah, but the first one always takes the most amount of time, energy and effort was the open water one. So after you get your rescue diver certification, you can become a professional level level diver, which means you become a what they call a dive master Master. Master you know, which isn't to be confused with Master diver. Oh, that is so darn confusing. So a master diver is a certification. It's kind of like an advanced diver. Okay, but even better, okay. And so it's like someone who's like good at like researching and doing this doing that. A Dive Master is different because it's somebody that's overseeing other divers that you're seeing is kind of like a leader. So that's what we call when the diver world splits off into professional level diving versus just recreational mass. A master scuba diver, which is more kind of recreational who's got lots of skills. Okay. A Dive Master is someone that can To oversee new students that are get certified, and dive masters usually help instructors, which is the next level certify students. So that at the very top level there is the instructor shirt as the instructor, their assistant is usually a dive master dive masters are also responsible for taking certified divers into environments that they haven't been before. So it's a it's like a new dive site and Palau or something higher, you'd want to hire a dive master to take you because you've never been before. And that's just we learned in our rescue class not safe to do.
I think that people don't always get that diving is this incredibly technical thing that requires so much training and so once you equipment and although a lot of it, I'm sure comes naturally to you. Now, there's a lot of work that goes into receiving your dive certification. And I remember I had to go through all of that when I was getting hired at the Aquarium of the Podcific listeners, I didn't actually have my dive certification when I applied. And I said that I did. And then they asked me for an interview. And I had to get it really fast. I don't think even my boss knows that. So I'm sorry.
Confession time.
I was very fortunate in that I had a very close friend of mine who was a dive instructor and was like, we'll get like, it'll be fine. Just apply for the job. And if it comes up, we'll do it really fast. And so I was able to get my certification. But it still took me a couple of weeks and then just getting my like little certification card took a while and they asked for a copy of it. And I was like, um, just give me and definitely the date on I have been in the ocean before. So everyone who is wondering I actually got certified specifically for this job. And if you work at the aquarium, you actually have to have at least an open water certification. Right?
You work with animals or you're working on.
Oh, no. I get this job. You are open water certified now.
I am. I'm getting there. I'm close to working on and we're working on it. Yes. I'm really excited. She's
doing great.
That's awesome. Are you helping her with it?
You know, I saw her I didn't actually do any of the instructing or dive mastering I was just say, I'm was a bystandard watching. And she's an all star you can really tell there's some people that are meant to scuba dive. Yeah, there's some people that are just better
on land and the water sign is better on
land person, but it was required for the show. So I am like a little recently morphed tadpole to Frog where I'm just like, I don't know not understand what's No, I'm not a crab. Rachel's a crab climbing up the ladder. I am the useless half frog. All that stuff. Between my land and my water. I
don't really know you're in the middle of evolution. Yeah, I'm
working on it. Don't worry about it. But yeah, so I mean, it takes a lot of work to get certified for diving. And it's definitely can be really dangerous to like what aspects of your job sort of involved safety or dive safety officer? What does that mean in terms of keeping everyone safe?
A lot of people when they look at the aquarium, they think that it's just one big pool? How dangerous could it possibly be diving in a pool? I mean, in the ocean, obviously, it's dangerous. But even when you're training, you go into a pool? Well, first I'd like to correct people and tell them imagine it's more of a Jacuzzi instead of a pool, because there are so many darn jets that are pumping water down there, that you're getting pushed from one side of the exhibit to the other. So it feels a little bit more like diving in a Jacuzzi. There's glass structures, there's overhead environment, there's Yeah, acrylic glass that's easily easily scratched by scuba tanks. There's some overhead environments, there are animals that are that behave uniquely because they are, you know, here are unique, and they are not scared of you when you're the one who has been feeding them for the past, you know, years. And so all of that, you know really comes into play is because a lot of what we're doing isn't just hanging out in the water waving at people. Most of the time, nine times out of 10 we have a plethora of tasks that we're doing that we're thinking about our number one most important task being to make sure that we're checking on buddy, the entire time that we're diving here. You know, our average age of dive volunteer is over the age of 40. And so and they're underwater quite a bit. I mean, last year, we know pre pandemic, we we were logging over 20,000 times a year. Wow. And so if you think about that the sheer amount of time people are underwater, and doing hard tasks like cleaning and feeding and watching their buddy and kicking around against the current. There's just a lot of little things that when added together could create a big problem. And so it's my job to make sure that those little things are managed effectively. We can't prevent all potential dangers from happening, you know, but we can see how they add up we can have like super situational global awareness and see just what are all the little aspects that can make something go wrong on a dive even down to you know, someone a bit congested today. You know, when I'm talking to one of the volunteers, they sound congested, does that mean that one of them was going to blow the eardrum because they're not being able to clear their ears underwater because of the pressure or maybe that's part of the state, you know, and that safety even right there. So it's, it's being aware of the things we know that are happening, things that might not be a big deal, but our little, but it's all of those kind of little things that create a big problem that we try to figure out how we can nip in the bud.
Yeah, our dive program seems extremely well organized. And on the back of every exhibit that is approved for diving, there's a dive plan that says, Hey, these are the approved, I have plans for this exhibit. And it is very specific. And it is for every single exhibit that is drivable. And I just saw our new data. So checking out all of those di plans the other day and getting familiar with them, because there's so much that goes into keeping things organized and safe and making sure people are doing the things that they're supposed to. And so I can't imagine how much thought and structure goes into creating something like that. So thank you.
Yeah, it's got to be so much work and so much, you know, mental checklists that you're constantly keeping track of
There's over I think there's over 50 exhibits that we dive in well, and so and you will, you'll see the dive officers were constantly walking around looking at things people laugh at me, they say, you know that a lot of people laugh and say that I'm always staring at a wall. Or like, I never know what you're looking at just your hands around your hips, and you're staring at the wall, just what are you thinking about? And most of the time, I'm thinking about how would I risk? How would I would get someone out of the situation if they needed to happen? You know, if just for some reason today was that person's day that they needed help? How would I get them out of this exhibit? I wouldn't get them up onto that rock.
I like that you said that. Because I will say like, you are a very, like, outgoing personality, very extroverted, I see you around the aquarium, you're always willing to chat. But there are some times I see very, like hyper focused, and I see like Ariana, and I'll be like, Hey, Rachel, you're like, hey, and like, like, you're higher in it. And that's, that's your job. You know, it's doing that mental work and like making sure like, you know, I have to look at this exhibit and consider all opportunities and all, you know, all ways that Yeah, anything could happen and how would we respond to that? Yeah, yeah, like even the other day, you were um, I was recording on TikTok. So, you know, just looking ridiculous. Rachel comes in and she's and she's trying to get the attention. And when the divers and there's, you know, a communication back and forth, yes, have you have hand signals you have, you know, things that you need to get done in the exhibit. They're trying to communicate, you know, on dry land versus so, like, it's very focused. And it's, it's got to be it's a lot of work.
Yeah, it's funny you say that because that's where my extroverted nests really comes out is what I'm trying to communicate to a diver behind the glass. You know, trying to get their attention first of all, you know, you don't want to slam you don't want to pound on the glass. You don't really hear it anyway, once you're in there. Like unless your head is right next to the glass, you really don't hear anything. And so trying to do jumping jacks or whatever, you know, what might blonde hair around just any kind of confusing I've since stopped doing so much of that because I have learned in my job how to be better at being patient and just telling them the information that they need them to know later. That's a big learning curve for me is that they don't need to know everything right now. Let's just talk about it next time. But yeah, talking to them and getting they're getting their attention by doing the jumping jacks and trying to figure out some kind of hand signal to tell them please don't clean that one coral. I want the coral that's to two inches away from it, not that one. And so how did how to find the hand signals to communicate that can be kind of challenging.
Well, there's a lot of exhibits here and there's a lot of divers and volunteer divers but for you what exhibits Have you dived in and out of all of our exhibits? What's your favorite?
I've done most of these in is that I actually haven't dove in all of them. That was always been something on my list. Every single Yeah, you know the surge West channel the surge west stuff. Where do you Surge east: done surge West when the far one and the surge and that's the one that I'm always staring out thinking I was like, get anybody out of that one.
Have you been in Hellbenders? Because that one needs to be dove
isn't only like three feet deep? Yeah, okay.
Probably a stand up meridian situation.
Now, I'm excited to get in. I'm really excited to get in some of the new exhibits. Oh, yeah, they're gonna be opening in the Southern California Baja gallery. I cannot wait seeing some of those behind the scenes. I'm just like, get me in there.
Yeah, on an upcoming episode, we're going to talk about our new gallery. I'm really excited to dive in. I just
spent like half an hour to an hour this morning helping put sand in one of our new eelgrass tanks. Oh, yes. Thanks. So that'll be really fun to see. And I'm sure it'll be fun to dive because it's so long. Swim. Yeah,
I can tell you probably my least favorite one is unfortunately probably the penguins just because of the smell lingers if you don't, if you don't wear a full face mask, and it's the wrong time of year you get that water up your nose and you smell penguin for the next two days. Yeah, and either molting
too, that's
probably the time of year which is about to happen. We talked a little bit about With that in the penguin episode really
any bet Okay, so I really dive in there is gonna have a
real stinky real quick because I'm not going in the water very often
and they get stinky they wet with the water gets stinky apparently so that that that scent has stuck with me for a while just because I couldn't figure out how to get it out of my nasal cavity.
Have you been in there since we redid that exhibit?
No. Okay, I haven't actually been in the water yet. I
think they made some modifications to make it more dive friendly. Typically, stinky. Yeah,
maybe less slippery.
But the idea of like, you know, when we're redesigning an exhibit, how can we incorporate things that make it safer for people who have to get in and out of the water and actually loved that that was a pretty big consideration when they were doing it.
That's a huge it's such a big deal. You know? So yes, probably paying this is my least fair. But my, my most favorite, which, you know, but the penguins are cute. I wish they would come up to me and I think and so therefore I feel like there's I feel like I'm the stinky one. Instead of them being the stinky one. So I don't get any lovin and I leave stinky. It's a lose lose.
Like there's penguins 30 feet away from me and I smell terrible.
Not ideal. So my favorite one has got to be blue cavern, though because I mean diving inside a building. Diving in a two story exhibit inside a building is pretty awesome. Because, you know, it's funny, you said earlier that you know people are like, Oh, you're like a real life mermaid and I consider myself a water fairy.
Because Okay, I'm sorry.
I like to say this because for me, the reason why I love scuba diving so much is because it reminds me of I feel like I'm flying. It's a pseudo flying station. For me, you're like way up there. Right? Exactly. And so sometimes I'm actually not really a big like hiker, because it goes somewhere beautiful. And I see a beautiful tree and I just really want to go up and look at that leaf. It's at the very top, and I can't because I'm above water and not under it. And super disappointing definitely changes how you like take in nature. And so when I get to go into blue cavern, and I'm a first on the bottom of the exhibit, talk to the kids on the bottom and then just a little push in a kick and now I'm at the bridge and I get to like wave at the people that are on the bridge like I actually feel like I am midair in the middle of a great hall so and that's a feeling that like the little five year old in me. And so that's I mean that's my favorite part of the job was that feeling that I get?
I'm surprised you're one of your favorite exhibits to dive in is one that's relatively chillier than a lot of our other exhibits. That's a cold water habitat
it's not the cold air that's the coldest as I said I don't go into surge sir just like like to coordinate right? 40 to 50. But um, blue cavern's about 50 between like 56 to 60. It usually fluctuates throughout the year. It is chilly. It mimics what's actually happening in the open ocean. Right off our coast here. Yeah. But it is. But it's easier to acclimate and that in this 58 Then I'd say the academy than 58 actually out in Catalina because the circular for some reason. It's just it doesn't stay so cold so long. But I can say that like there have been times where I've had to be a safety diver for some like event dive where they were in the water for like an hour
exhibit is based off of a blue cavern dive site. Right. And you said that's like Catalina? Yeah. Have you been there? Have you seen it?
Yes. Yeah, I gotta compare it. You know, the Blue Cavern, and Catalina. So the blue cat, the real blue cavern dive site and Catalina is on the side that's facing the mainland. Okay, and it's near the isthmus, which is the skinny skinny low part of the island. So if you're on the beach here, like in LA, and you're looking that way, it's going to be like, very much like basically a hair to the left side of this skinny little isthmus part, that's basically we're blue cavern is. So you can look at it from the shore. It is it's a pretty deep dive the cavern itself and so you go down, I think you go down about like 85 to 90 feet, wow. All the way down. So it gets pretty like cold and dark down there. And when you're in California, 90 feet and you know, in Fiji feels like it could be 10 feet, but 90 feet here in California is feels like 900 feet. So you get down 90 feet, and there's this big hole in the rock. It's probably about the size of this. This room, it's a few car length of city stack, maybe four cars on top of each other probably fit fit inside. And it's just like this big hole and you get to go and swim into this hole and it's creepy and there's nothing really in there except for like gorgonians and it's for like these big sea fans and stuff. Blow your bubbles and come on right out. Yeah. Which actually does mimic what the real blue cavern which is pardon me our exhibit looks like kind of so if you're looking at our exhibit in the far left corner, it looks like there's this dark hole and that is kind of what the Dark Hole kind of looks like in blue covered my favorite part though, about that day. I have in the open ocean though is because you and usually the group that you're with are in this hole for so long, you're blowing bubbles blowing bubbles blowing bubbles. Well, those bubbles get trapped up in this hole, which is about 80 feet underwater. The cool part is that once you're done diving deep, and you're going to finish your dive a little bit shallower you come up on top of where this rocky hole was. And all of those bubbles that you had just blown out are now trying to find their way to the surface. So they find a way through tiny little cracks. And when you come up to do the rest of your dive in the shallow, sunnier beautiful, you know, where there's all this kelp and sun and beautiful things. There's also a whole bunch of tiny little champagne bubbles that are coming up that are sparkling and it feels like you're just diving through pixie dust. That is so cool. And that's what really makes the Blue Cavern dive magical in my opinion. That's
so cool. That's amazing. Okay, well, you talked a little bit about you know, you're getting into habitats here and our entire dive team, including our volunteers, you're getting into habitats or you're not just swimming, you're not just getting in there for fun seats and you know, just hanging out. What are you guys doing in there? What what is the typical dive look like?
So we do a few different things. Um, one of our big things that we do sudo apt for things first thing is cleaning. We are constantly cleaning the exhibits people ask like, oh, how often do you have to go in and clean algae every day? Every day we can get in there every day I caught the war on algae because it will never end. And so we're constantly are waiting. There are definitely when he especially now it's summertime. Oof, they have restocked Yes, definitely. So on the exhibits to get more sun during the summertime those get needs to be cleaned twice as often. Um, and we use hand scrubbing brushes, electric hand scrubbing brushes, we have also big power washer powered scrubbing brushes, which are super heavy and hardcore. So we do lots lots of scrubbing all the time. We also have even some like smaller brushes for like the nuts and craning is we have to clean the windows constantly, every single day, truthfully. And then another thing that we do is feed the animals so in a lot of our so in a few of our exhibits, especially our big ones are tropical reef and blue cavern, we hand feed the animals. So spoiled, spoiled. Yeah, we just like feed with on like a silver platter. No, I'm kidding. Basically, though, but truthfully, if we were to just throw all of the food at the surface of the water and let the animals come in and get it, some of our animals wouldn't get any food because just our faster, smaller, more agile animals would come and get all the food. And truthfully, the bigger animals like the grouper wouldn't probably wind up getting a piece because they're just not very fast. That's not they don't get their food from the surface of the water in the open ocean. So they'll just let their friends get this food from the surface of the ocean, and they'll just get their friend later. So in order to prevent that from happening, we have divers that get in the water and hand feed those bigger, slower animals. And we make sure that they get the appropriate amount of food, we document how many pieces that they got, if they had a specific type of medication that's put into a specific fish that they need to eat, we note that as well. So feeding happens every day here as well, whether it's in a couple of different exhibits. Um, so that's the second thing we do. Third thing we do is, some of us do presentations underwater. So we do talk to our guests using an underwater full face mask and communication systems, giving into our presentations for the Blue Cavern and Trop Reef. And then lastly, but probably our most important job that people don't know about is to be the general observers of the exhibit. So even these big exhibits that have 1000s of fish in them only have maybe two people that are really the aquarists that are in charge of that exhibit. So as you know, 90 volunteer divers that are coming in every single week, they serve as 90 pairs of eyes for to see if things are quote unquote, not normal. And so it takes a while for those volunteers to know what normal looks like. It's usually pretty funky. Like but you know, I don't know how many people you know how I like to ask people how many people have a dog how many people have a normal dog normal cat you know, you need to in this room zero exactly. You spend enough time with the animal to know what normal is. So when they stopped doing that one super weird thing that they always do you know that that's not normal. And so the fish are the exact same way they have so much personality. Individually different animals of the same exact species behave very differently. You would I never knew I grew up with a fish tank forever but I never really knew how much a fish is like your your cat or your dog or your for bird hardcore personalities and so knowing what normal looks like and documenting that if we see something that appears to be off because once it becomes obvious that something's off safe like an animal is changing color something or is and happier. It's just if it's if it's very obvious, then usually it's, it's, it's bad news. So we try to find it when it's not so obvious, which is usually behavioral change.
So you're the dive team is so a part of our husbandry team as well, you guys are so intertwined because you are observing the animals from right in their face right underwater. And I think it's really fascinating to getting to see, like an exhibit like tropical reef where there's over 1000 animals, it's 350,000 gallons, it's our largest exhibit. There's some animals that are target trained and fed by Aquarist at the top. But at the same time, there's so much choreography underwater, that you guys aren't doing scatter feeds, and you guys are feeding individual animals and feeding like our stingrays under there. I just think it's so cool that, you know, we're all able to work together for the health and safety of our incredible animals, we
call it coordinated chaos.
To watch do and you guys make it look, you make it look so seamless. Like as you know, if you go to a dive show here at the Aquarium, they happen daily in blue cat in our Honda blue cavern and tropical reef exhibits. It is so seamless. And I know there's so much work that goes into it to make it seamless and probably to you like, if you only knew you only knew. But you guys may you guys are so caring about the animals. And we're so lucky to have you know, volunteers, people who volunteer their time to get in there and do hard work. It's not it's like, like I said, they're not just in their swimming, as much as fun as that would be. But those animals require constant care and constant cleaning. You know,
some of the hardest work is really like I love our mission statement so much to instill a sense of wonder, respect and stewardship for the Pacific Ocean, its inhabitants and ecosystems. And it's some of the hardest work for us is making sure it's remembering that mission statement and making sure that we are teaching appropriate stewardship of our animals and our environment. It's a big thing for us divers, and what the Aquarium of the Pacific believes in is teaching good stewardship. You know, that can come off a little I have to explain that to some volunteers, because they might think that, you know, they're trying to convince one of the guests that this leopard shark isn't going to bite them. So they're in that effort, they might try to pet the shark or rub it on its belly or you know, do something that makes the shark seem less scary to show the guest. Instead of trying to do things like that we have to we have to not do those things, we have to actually show the animal the respect that it deserves. And show the guests that that's not something that's appropriate to do. We can't we want you to fall in love with the shark and not think it's scary. But we also don't want you hugging the shark. Because we don't want you going to respect it. Exactly, you know. And so even when it comes to like how we are diving around the coral, you know, we want to make sure that we're not putting your knees on the coral, or you know, on the rock work, or we're not grabbing a coral head when we're moving ourselves around. I mean, the secret is secret info is in a lot of our duyvil exhibits, all the coral is artificial. But we have to make sure that we're showing the guests How would you normally behave if this wasn't artificial? And again, in Jacuzzi that can
be really hard. flowing around.
That's something I've never considered before. Yeah, I've never gone to a dive show and seen you guys sitting on a piece of coral or you know, kind of hanging off of it. And like that would be probably very fun to do. But yeah, you're right stewardship, you don't want to show someone this is supposed to mimic an ocean an open water ocean habitat. You wouldn't do that in the in the wild. So we wouldn't do that here.
Right? People don't watch other people in the ocean people don't you know, when you were watching all of our fun documentary videos these days, you know, when you were watching a video about Hawaii, we're usually not watching people snorkeling or watching people diving in the water. And so people don't know how they're supposed to interact with the environment itself, not just the animals, just the environment itself. And so I think that that's kind of an important thing that I have to, we have to remind our volunteers often is, you know, just just think about it from the perspective of our guest and some of our guests members that maybe don't have as much of a relationship with the ocean and are trying to find that relationship. So
I think I love dive culture so much is about leaving things as they are or you know, if there's trash, picking it up and making things better for the ocean. And it's so much about that sort of mutual respect that you have with the ocean and its inhabitants and ecosystems and just making sure you're not disrupting the processes that are going on. That being said, our animals here at the Aquarium don't know that that's what you're doing. And so do you ever end up with any weird animal interactions on their end coming up to you?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
Please tell Oh, gosh.
Let's see. Well, I like day to day right? Yes, today I'm probably our is our green sea turtle in our tropical reef exhibit.
This is copper is it? Celebrity
Copper is a celebrity he really is troublemaker right he's
got So much personality. He likes to really get in our personal space as divers. I mean, you're usually when you see a party like, Oh, how cute. Let me be within 10 feet of you. Let me let me just be near you, you know. And now these guys, you'll be trying to put your fins on in the water and this green sea turtle is like a human let me be near you just his face opens right in front of yours in though in the water. And it's again, it's tempting to not want to just hug him because he's right there. But again, respectfully, he needs to he needs respectful of your space.
Stewardship with the humans as well
as he's really getting roasted on this podcast.
Yeah, he loved I swear he just loves the attention.
I think that sort of leads us to one of our social media questions that we've had is do the animals ever go towards the entrance or exits of the water when you're diving in there? Because they know people come in and out of those spaces. Sounds like copper, maybe.
Most of the animals when we're going in the water, they come towards us the only one, the only ones that don't are noticeably are the Sharks. Sharks really don't want anything to do with this. I like to say that sharks, their behavior very much resembles a feral cat. And I say that because there's lots of feral cats around here at the jetty at the aquarium. And so you know, like when you see a feral cat and bolt, you take one step towards it, because you like, oh, Katie, and it's just gone. Yes. Right. But then like two minutes later, you look to your left hand side, and it's sharing it the whole time and you're like, hey, you were over there, how are you there and then you take another step towards it, and then it's gone. Like that is very much in my opinion, like Shark energy is like they are very curious and they want to know what you're doing. So they will be they will hang out. But the second you start kind of showing any interest in them. They're still out there. super
fascinating. So
it's like that same kind of curious, strong energy as a little aristocat
We actually had another question about diving with Shark we talked to Rachel Munson about, you know, diving with sharks inside of shark lagoon. And how you know, that's something that people probably ask you a lot about, like, do you dive with sharks? Isn't that terrifying?
It's the most boring dive. I swear is by far the most boring thing. So far, all of our divers, you're like, I want to dive shark lagoon. I want to get your glue certified. I want to drive shark and then they do and they're like, that's like, super boring. Like I told you, it's the most boring guy but like do because they don't want nothing to do with you. And then we're in there and we have our sticks. We have like six there's just chuck bouncers, bouncers. Yeah,
some sweet zebra sharks and there's, you know,
the cutest Hey, Rachel. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
So the I know the shotgun tank is very, it's it's really, really mellow. We used to be able to hand feed the leopard sharks and blue cavern, which was fun when we hand feed them because of their mouth shape is meant to crush like, it's like crushing plates. They're not like serrated teeth. And so it's kind of like, because they eat like clams and stuff. And their mouth is on the bottom of their body. And so we would just like hold up a clam cup in her hand, and they would just like eat it out of our hand like kibble that was super fun. They really gave me some like puppy vibe.
They do have kind of a puppy face. Yeah, they really are cute.
They do.
I had another question about a specific animal that I hear a lot about. It's kind of famous. I want to talk about Bubbles the bat fish.
Yes, bat fish are also called a golden spade fish. Bubbles is wonderful. He's got the most personality of all. So what happens is we get me to bubbles bubbles has been there for at least 15 years, I'm pretty sure Wow. And so he's been for a long time. And when divers are in the water, and they're relatively relaxed in the big main window in their tropical reef exhibit, this big spayed fish will come over and start trying to eat the bubbles that you're exhaling it's really cute. It's really cute. And if you haven't really given him a good, you know, purge of bubbles in a while, he'll kind of start to like Peck or like nip at your hairline or which is huge, which is covered by a hood but he just kind of like looks at the top and you can feel on bubble bowties like come on, man. Yeah. Um, but it's really it's a really good sign though. When bubbles comes over a lot of times we'll have brand new divers that we're doing like an exhibit checkout for and yeah, I know that someone is definitely passing when bubbles comes over and starts trying to eat their bubbles because it doesn't happen to do divers very often because you have to be relaxed. It's like keep getting like feel whether you're bubbles so those are the those are the good bubbles. And so then when a new divers getting checked out of bubbles comes over and uses bubbles I'm like okay, this guy's
bubble. That's his check off. Yes.
Yeah. So cute. What's crazy is we have like, I think like six batfishall of the same species and none Have them do it except for him that one fish bubbles, you know? I think it must have something to do with like, it just feels good on his gills because the bubbles go in his mouth and over his gills.
I think people would be surprised to know about the kind of the personality of fish. You know, you don't think the fish is something really with a personality. But I've learned so much here about different animals. Are there any other fun stories that you've had about? Maybe fish in particular or any other animals inside of our habitats?
Oh, gosh, I you know, I think the eagle rays have been a big standout for me.
They're big in size, and big and
exciting. Both because they, they came, they came to our aquarium, they're probably about maybe like a foot and a half in length. I remember when we first started feeding there was a male and a female. And now they're how many feet I think like six or eight like 100.
Yeah. There's so
many Yeah, like five or six foot wingspan. Now I know their tail is nine feet. And just to see how quickly that array has grown in the past three years, I guess. Yeah, I guess it has been that many years. But you know, in the last several years, and the fun parts, we got to hand feed them for a period of time. And there was this like training behavior that they had to touch this purple cone before they were presented with the, with a piece of clam, which is interesting, because I couldn't have like I couldn't show him the clam before he touched the cone. Like he has to touch the cone in order to get the clams. So we called ourselves the human gumball machine. Because you really have to think about yourself, like like, you don't get the gumball until you pull you put the coin and turn the dial. Yeah, okay. And so the eagle rays are really fun. They were just, it's from a personality aspect, it was just kind of fun to watch this animal figure its grow up and figure itself out, like in the same way that like a little kid is like learning how to run the correct way or learning how to put on his jacket in the right way or something or just even so much as I go down and tie your shoes, but just the kind of fumbling that animals do as when they're younger, when they're trying to figure out how they're going to grow into their size. It was really interesting to see that in a ray of fish, you know, you don't really you don't see that so much in like insects or things that you see that are very much just in innate instinct. Yeah, you know, things that don't have a mothering period, you know, like, like eagle rays don't have a mothering period, they're born, you know, go ready to go, right. But they still have to figure it out on their own. They aren't like pre programmed to know how to do it. And so just to see that like juvenile learning state develop, and it's normal have a cat and a dog, I wouldn't think anything I would have gotten a dog but it was really special to see that in this cartilaginous flat shark fish. With pretty spot.
They are very pretty. So we were talking about our volunteer divers. Can you talk a little bit about that program?
Yeah, so our volunteer dive program. It's, it's super great. It's a big time commitment. It is 1 4 to five hour shift every week for a minimum of one year for about 75% of the year. So if you are scuba diver, and you want to come down at the aquarium and you got some time, maybe you have like Wednesday afternoons, do you have Friday afternoons, how about Saturday mornings, you know, that's the day that you come in. And so you'll get assigned to a team that's come in every week on that same team. So I've got like a Friday, I got a Monday afternoon team that's all been here for many years. And they're all just like super good buddies and friends. And so you could they come in every Monday for about 70% of the year and they just go diving, they do the underwater presentations. They do the underwater cleaning, feedings and the observations. And so they're basically doing everything here. The minimum age in order to do this is 18. So you do need to be 18, you do have to be a rescue diver. So I said earlier, there was the open water advanced rescue. So it's the third level rescue diver, you do need to have your First Aid CPR and AED certification as well as your emergency O2, which is all usually things that you get when you get your rescue certification as well. And you need to have 50 logged dives. So those are all new minimum requirements in order to apply for the program. Mainly just because you're diving so much we need you to be of a certain you know, safety level. And so then what you do is you apply online if you do have those things, or at least at minimum, if you've got your recipe certification 50 logged dives, sign up, you can sign up online, you can go to aquarium volunteers.org and check out the adult. Check out the the adult volunteer opportunities and the applications are open right now. They're not open most of the year, and so they just opened on June 1, and they're going to be open for a few months this summer. And so we are accepting dye volunteers right now and I'm eager to get some more people in. It's a lot of it's a lot of time it's a lot of training. It's a lot of work. It's the most demanding volunteer job I've ever heard of. Yeah, but it is also the most rewarding
get they're always so happy when I see them. They are the nicest people always. And they'll go, Hey, I just got out of pinnipeds I'm gonna first shower, then I'm getting a bouquet you don't like it's always just the most fun sounding day to and they're in the best moods. Yep. And I think it's just they love being in the water so much.
There's really a sense of community there too, I think because I'll go up to the dive locker and there's a potluck happening. And they're all like around and they're all hanging out. I'll do I'll be doing it behind the scenes tour. And it's volunteer divers, and I have, you know, guests with me. And I'm like, hi, everybody. These are volunteer divers. And everybody says, Hi, everybody's like talking to my guests. And just making them feel so welcomed in that space. I just think it's so cool. So we had a really amazing group of volunteers. It's really awesome. And they're so eager to talk about what they do. Like they help so much with our marketing efforts. And you know, they're here on their own time. It's really special.
Right, some of them drive super far. Some of them have a commute of over two hours to three hours to come every single week, every week there and then back again. So
awesome. Shout out to all of our volunteers shout out to
our volunteers. So one of the social media questions that we got was can you talk while underwater? And if not, how do you communicate with other divers while you're in the water? Good question.
Um, we can talk but our talking is limited to only the person on the dry side of the tank with a microphone we cannot talk to each other underwater unfortunately. Um, so our you know, Bluetooth actually does not work under underwater either and solely and you know, it doesn't I believe that there's countless like rudimentary version of it with some kind of underwater comms. I think there's some commercial driving aspects to do it, but we don't, our communication line is a hard line that goes straight from the mask up to the surface, we wear a full face mask, and there's a little microphone inside the oral mouth nasal mouthpiece area. And so we hardline that to the top and then we can talk to somebody on a microphone on the other side. Which is it's pretty interesting because when we're trying to talk to that person on their side, we have to make sure that they're not asking us a question at the same time that we're taking an inhale it's loud to think about breathing breathing is loud underwater, you know, and so breathing out bubbles and taking the air into you know, out from the tank in your body or blowing out the bubbles, it's loud and so you have to kind of time your breathing correctly, to when this person is going to be talking. So that's why we don't do too much communicate that's why we don't do any communicating with each other underwater. When it comes to trying to communicate with each other underwater, we have hand signals, which are there most of them are just the generic dive industry hand signals that you learn in your open water classes. Sometimes we like to make up new ones. That's kind of one of the fun parts of diving is when you're planning your dive, sitting back and be like okay, so what are we going to be talking what are we going to need to talk about underwater and therefore what are some hand size like what are some hand signs that we can do like for example just this last week I mean one of the trop reef Aquarist Celeste when a when in the exhibit to take some photos for feeding training binder and so she was I was like her little model and she had take pictures of me and I wasn't sure we she was taking two shots one was how the position is supposed to be and one how the position is supposed to be like I know like yes I do and there it is. And so we had hand signals for doing it don't and our like don't hand signal was like an upside down okay sign and are like this is this is the good shot was a was the sign you do for money money because it's the money shot rubbing bills in between Yeah. And so that was the money shots that was the hand side the way we just use it just for that dive. And then so when we were under there though, when we were all done and we wrapped it all up we all started making it rain rain that was little fun any shot make it rain, so that's kind of a new funny one. It's really fun. But there's there's tons of there's there's tons of
there's a whole language of communication underwater. Yes, that's right. Yeah, I
think the hardest barrier for entry for me was that I kept putting a thumbs up every time something I was like yeah, regulators working. Yeah, I'm doing great. And my friend who was teaching me to dive like yanked me out were like three feet underwater yanked me out the water. Stop doing that. Yeah. And I was like, ah, and so I like never did the okay so my dad always doesn't okay. And I just associated with like my dorky dad to change it from a thumbs up to an okay sign because if you do a thumbs up, that means go to the surface, which is a very specific thing.
I totally catch myself doing that too, because I'll do photos with our dive team. You know, when I get the shot, I give a thumbs up and I'm like, I'm like but I'm not listening. You know, if you're
trying to tell a diver with that Telling them that that was like awesome or good or cool or yay give them a hang 10 signs, okay the shaka
one of my favorite things to witness as an employee is the interactions between our divers and our guests. Cute. They play rock paper scissors, they give high fives, they blow water bubble kisses, and it's so amazing. Can you talk about the interaction you've had with their guests?
Oh, gosh, that's so fun. Yeah, we couldn't see the guests just as well as they can see us, which I think is fun. I mean, the glass I think is like between like five to nine inches thick. But we can see we can't hear on the other side of the glass too much. But um, but we can definitely see it. And rock paper scissors is always so much fun. I think the most fun is seeing the look, not only just the look on the kids faces, but the look on the adults faces. And how similar in a wonder they are is it's really cool because you know, the adults get this this this charge of energy sometimes and their eyes just light up when they look at you and they're so excited. But they're genuinely excited for themselves not just excited for their kids for the kid to see the diver. And so that's that's a fun thing for me because and I've done some odd jobs in the years and you know, being a princess character at a birthday party or something i odd jobs. And let me tell you, they're never no one has ever been more excited to see a scuba diver forget. Forget princesses. It's all about the scuba divers. And so that's been really fun to see that kind of wonder excitement, amazement out of adults and kids when you're when you're under there, and so we can see you just as well. We'd love to do rock paper scissors. We like just like staring at the kids because they're just staring us it's just like, because you can see they're thinking like, Are you a real person? Like, who are you? Do you actually see me? What are you like how you breathing, they're just staring at you trying to figure it out. And so sometimes I just like to stare back just trying to figure that out. Do you know, it gives them cross eyes. A lot of times like to go upside down. Which is kind of fun, too. And so just you know, just being animated. Haven't been so inspiring
to because I think when you're a kid, you see that and you're like, oh, that's that's a person that's a job. I can maybe do that. Yes, I could maybe do and being an adult to just realizing like, oh, you can do that. There's opportunities to do some feeling
right. It's that lender, right? That it says instilling that sense of wonder, right and astronaut,
you know, like, yes, it's you're seeing you're in a suit and you're in a space where gravity is kind of weird.
Right? floating around? Yeah.
It's very much yeah, it's very much like watching Yeah, like watching like a real life astronaut. Do it. It's, you almost wish so often you wish that you could just like pull them right into the water with you. Yeah, you know, that's, that's the hard part. It's hard to say goodbye. You know, it's you say no, no, it's always it's always hard to say goodbye. You just want to stay down there and wave and high five. And just like, you really wish that you could just get to know these people a little bit more when you're looking at them had five more minutes. You know, I've won my like dreams has always been you know, because I just think about like, random cooling couldn't be cool if we if we all had communication lines. And there's like a red mask and a blue mask and the mask, you could press a button and talk to the red mask diver, or the blue mask or these are these are all great. These are Rachel fantasies. You know, I don't know just if there's a way that I could just I don't know, or sometimes I just wish that I could just like, dry off real quick and run down and see everybody and just kind of meet me, I'm a real person.
You know, like note that's
funny. One of the funniest things I've ever seen was when I was watching some divers, and there was these, there was a couple of little old ladies, there was conversation whether the divers are real or not. And she's like, I'm not sure they I think they're real. I don't I'm not sure. And her friend was like those aren't real people. Those are robots. And so certain so certain she convinced her friend didn't just like thank herself completely convinced her friend that she was ridiculous for thinking that they were real people. They're definitely robot
that we could afford as a nonprofit that look and act just like real people. And clean and do
technology.
underwater robots.
I get that sometimes some people will comment on our TikToks and say this sea lion CGI, no way does it look like that? Yeah, you must think I'm, I'm adding that to my resume. so talented that I can CGI.
It's usually like the facial expressions are trained to do like a smile or a tongue people like that's fake and you're like, why? How would I have faked that that is
a lot of a lot of trust in my talent.
But in a world where deep fakes and AI and all these things are happening today suspicious, I'm just gonna deep fake a robot into Rachel and then it'd be very confusing.
Imagine I just have a vision of Rachel doing the robot in her scuba makes you TikTok, there we go.
this can happen
Underwater, you should do the robot. Perfect. Amazing. We have your next TikTok idea,
I think Yeah. Speaking of TikToks, Rachel has hosted some live TikToks while diving. And they are so much fun to do. But so many people going back to kind of like taking your breaths at the right time and everything there's so many people are after remind them in the comments, or Rachel and I will be speaking while she's underwater and I'm in an area above, okay, it's kind of like a closet that we that we huddle into. And I've always looked at my closet, my personal AOP closet. And I have to tell people like Rachel's fine, everybody, she's breathing underwater, so it's just gonna take moments where she's breathing and you hear it, and it kind of sounds like Is she okay? Is she alright? It's like, yeah, she's doing great. I'm like, Rachel, you doing good. And then she's like, yep, doing great. Those are really, really fun to do. Yeah. Do you want to?
Yeah, that was so much fun. One of the highlights of working here so far actually has been doing that TikTok live underwater, especially because it was the first time I had done it and where presentation since before COVID. So I was definitely out of breath.
i It's a lot to talk and dive at the same time. Using is there 40 minutes long minimum. So yeah, those live streams. So
a lot of people don't understand too is that with diving, you're actually you're actually like swimming with your breath. So by using your lung volume, I mean your lung volume is a lot of air and a full breath of air can make you float and a without any can make you sink and that's where we actually used keep good buoyancy underwater while we're diving. And so to talk, you don't really have control over that. And so your buoyancy just kind of gets like all around the grouper almost ate the GoPro.
Yeah, that's I'm gonna put that in the show notes, too. There's a really fun video of the group. We're just going for it. Yeah,
he's like, this is the group or here's just like you see the inside of his gills and I'm like,
it was late after we last saw the inside of our grouper today it was awesome
last question is I think some people don't realize that fish have teeth, or are capable of kind of nibbling? Does that happen ever? Yeah,
the nibblers of the exhibits are usually the smallest, the smallest animals and the small and they're in quite a few of the exhibits up in the chop grief. They're the small black damselfish or I think they're called White spotted damsels. They're maybe like the size of a base. Like they're like the roundness of a baseball. They're super small. And they are territorial. They're kind of like a Garibaldi the same kind of species of your bodies. They're territorial of a certain area. So if like, you are trying to scrub a rock and you have your hand on another rock, which you're trying to gain for lead, just holding on to for leverage. They'll come over and they'll come like peck at your fingers, my rock, that's my rock. Like taking your finger, which it doesn't hurt. But man, it'll make you jump out here. Are
you sure? Yeah,
it's very start. It's very startling. So those are the only ones that actually like well unnecessarily like eat you are trying to you know, eat at you. That we do all have to wear gloves and hoods, though because we have to cover our fingertips and our, our ears as well. Because both of those if just a little bit of a this is exposed, it looks like a piece of clam and a lot of the animals actually clam. And so but yeah, they you know, the, the only ever really nibble on you when you're feeding like during feeding time or if they're associated
with food. Yeah. Oh, it's
totally if you got food. It's a food thing or a little bit of a Hey, that's my rock.
Cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast. Yeah, that's really important. I know I learned so much and I can't wait to get a lot of. 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 @aquariumpacific on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
This podcast is produced by Erin Lundy, Madeline Walden and Scott Shaw. Our music is by Andrew Reitsma and our podcast art is by Brandy Kenney, special thanks to Cecile Fisher and Anitza Valles and our audio visual and education departments, and to all of our amazing podcast guests for 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 donors, members, guests and supporters. Thanks for listening
