Thursday, August 9, 2007
A Change of Pace
I always envied aquarium animal trainers. It seemed to me, as surely it does to every 10-year-old (yeah, developmentally, I just sorta stopped there), that they have the best jobs in the world. What better way to spend your days than to play with sea lions and dolphins and killer whales and such? You get to play with them and you get to pet them and they know you. What heartless wretch doesn’t want to give a seal a hug?
Then I did part of the trainers' job.
I and two other volunteers climbed down into the ammonia seastink of a drained sea lion pool and, for 8 hours, we power-washed algae from every square inch of nearly 200,000 gallons worth of tank. It was long, wet, filthy work. Inside the tank there was no sound but for the constant, high-pitched thrum of the power-washing nozzle. The algae, being three times as tenacious as a Jehovah’s Witness selling vacuums door-to-door, would only peel from the blue-painted concrete if you worked only several inches at a time. By far, the most fun is when the washer spray hits an irregularity in the pool, like a drain or a corner, and the water splashes back directly at you, carrying with it a half-pound of that nasty, green slime and who knows what sort of bacteria.
This, mind you, is not the normal function of the volunteer dive team -- which is to dive into FULL tanks to clean them. No, no, I volunteered to do this because... well... I guess I don’t rightly know why. I guess I just didn't have anything else to do. This particular job is usually that of the trainers.
I could hear the trainers, just barely, over the whine of the sharp water jets. The music of the sea lion show echoed over the back of the stands, which were packed with clapping, cheering camp groups and families who would likely never see the holding facilities and the upkeep work for them. I could hear voices but not make out the words, which were surely facts about sea lions, such as what differentiates them from seals, what they eat, how fast they swim. The trainers relay all that information, which could easily be gotten from Animal Planet, but is far more effectively conveyed when there is an actual, live sea lion doing things right in front of you.
And as I heard the faint island beat of “Don’t Worry” hanging like cheery mist well above the funky cloud inside the pool, I started thinking about how wrong I’d been to envy the trainers. They don’t get to hug seals. You NEVER hug the seals. In fact, you go as far out of your way as you can to train the animals to allow you to inspect them without having to touch them at all. Animals don’t, as a rule, really like being touched. (Well, except for my cat Molly. If you’re not petting her, she gets pissed.)
The reality is that they spend their days chopping up and measuring food for them. Diligently monitoring every aspect of their health. Smelling like fish all the time. And, every once in a while, power-washing algae out of their tanks. It is an enormous amount of work for a couple of half-hour shows a day, during which they need to make it look like they have nothing but fun all the time and that they have the best jobs in the world.
In the wild, of course, these animals take care of themselves, by and large. As best they can, anyway, while they try to avoid getting eaten by bigger animals. But they can’t take care of themselves completely, because of us.
We aren’t keeping them penned and trying to get them to mate and doing our best not to poke and prod them and show us their teeth when they’re in the wild, but our impact on them is just as great. No, greater. Because when we ignore one sea lion’s habitat, we ignore all sea lions’ habitat.
I started to get angry, down in that pit. I started to get angry because there are animal trainers who do this ridiculous amount of work to try to show people why we need to respect the environment and the animals in it, while the vast majority of the people in the audience will leave the auditorium and not change their behavior one bit. It is not as though we all need to do as much work as the trainers to maintain natural habitats... we just need to do little things that ensure we start leaving those habitats alone. Not eight to 12 hours of hard, foul-smelling work a day for nine sea lions... only a few minutes of paying attention for all sea lions.
I don’t tend to stay angry for very long, though. I nursed myself back to a smile with the thought, “Well… maybe just one person will change a little. If not today, sometime.” Because the change of just one person... well, that’s change, isn’t it?
At the end of the day I climbed out of the tank smelling like I just spent a month rifling through gym socks in Davey Jones’ Locker and, on aching feet, I walked past a holding pen full of fur seals. They were staring at me and making a funny chirping noise that I am sure can be translated into English as, “Yo! You got any fish?” In that moment I desperately wished I was one of the trainers, so that I could answer "Yes."
I’d get fired in an instant though. For giving one a hug.
For information on how you can make little differences without breaking a sweat or smelling like sea lion piss, follow these links:
Then I did part of the trainers' job.
I and two other volunteers climbed down into the ammonia seastink of a drained sea lion pool and, for 8 hours, we power-washed algae from every square inch of nearly 200,000 gallons worth of tank. It was long, wet, filthy work. Inside the tank there was no sound but for the constant, high-pitched thrum of the power-washing nozzle. The algae, being three times as tenacious as a Jehovah’s Witness selling vacuums door-to-door, would only peel from the blue-painted concrete if you worked only several inches at a time. By far, the most fun is when the washer spray hits an irregularity in the pool, like a drain or a corner, and the water splashes back directly at you, carrying with it a half-pound of that nasty, green slime and who knows what sort of bacteria.
This, mind you, is not the normal function of the volunteer dive team -- which is to dive into FULL tanks to clean them. No, no, I volunteered to do this because... well... I guess I don’t rightly know why. I guess I just didn't have anything else to do. This particular job is usually that of the trainers.
I could hear the trainers, just barely, over the whine of the sharp water jets. The music of the sea lion show echoed over the back of the stands, which were packed with clapping, cheering camp groups and families who would likely never see the holding facilities and the upkeep work for them. I could hear voices but not make out the words, which were surely facts about sea lions, such as what differentiates them from seals, what they eat, how fast they swim. The trainers relay all that information, which could easily be gotten from Animal Planet, but is far more effectively conveyed when there is an actual, live sea lion doing things right in front of you.
And as I heard the faint island beat of “Don’t Worry” hanging like cheery mist well above the funky cloud inside the pool, I started thinking about how wrong I’d been to envy the trainers. They don’t get to hug seals. You NEVER hug the seals. In fact, you go as far out of your way as you can to train the animals to allow you to inspect them without having to touch them at all. Animals don’t, as a rule, really like being touched. (Well, except for my cat Molly. If you’re not petting her, she gets pissed.)
The reality is that they spend their days chopping up and measuring food for them. Diligently monitoring every aspect of their health. Smelling like fish all the time. And, every once in a while, power-washing algae out of their tanks. It is an enormous amount of work for a couple of half-hour shows a day, during which they need to make it look like they have nothing but fun all the time and that they have the best jobs in the world.
In the wild, of course, these animals take care of themselves, by and large. As best they can, anyway, while they try to avoid getting eaten by bigger animals. But they can’t take care of themselves completely, because of us.
We aren’t keeping them penned and trying to get them to mate and doing our best not to poke and prod them and show us their teeth when they’re in the wild, but our impact on them is just as great. No, greater. Because when we ignore one sea lion’s habitat, we ignore all sea lions’ habitat.
I started to get angry, down in that pit. I started to get angry because there are animal trainers who do this ridiculous amount of work to try to show people why we need to respect the environment and the animals in it, while the vast majority of the people in the audience will leave the auditorium and not change their behavior one bit. It is not as though we all need to do as much work as the trainers to maintain natural habitats... we just need to do little things that ensure we start leaving those habitats alone. Not eight to 12 hours of hard, foul-smelling work a day for nine sea lions... only a few minutes of paying attention for all sea lions.
I don’t tend to stay angry for very long, though. I nursed myself back to a smile with the thought, “Well… maybe just one person will change a little. If not today, sometime.” Because the change of just one person... well, that’s change, isn’t it?
At the end of the day I climbed out of the tank smelling like I just spent a month rifling through gym socks in Davey Jones’ Locker and, on aching feet, I walked past a holding pen full of fur seals. They were staring at me and making a funny chirping noise that I am sure can be translated into English as, “Yo! You got any fish?” In that moment I desperately wished I was one of the trainers, so that I could answer "Yes."
I’d get fired in an instant though. For giving one a hug.
For information on how you can make little differences without breaking a sweat or smelling like sea lion piss, follow these links:
- Ocean Conservancy - Living Responsibly
- SeaWeb: 10 Things You Can Do
- MarineBio: 100 Things We Can All Do
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