Another action packed day with lots of mouths to feed.... Arrived at Marine Mammal Center 7 AM to meet a new crew... and much to my surprise Oahu's volunteers old friend Aubrey (who was a KP2 caretaker). The first task of the day was to move 8 elephant seals out of different pens, weigh them and then put them in a holding pen. Since these animals are ready for release they are bigger and very independent. How this works is the seal is crowded with boards to crawl into a wheel barrel... then is raced around the corner to the scale.... weighed and raced back to a holding pen. Honestly I was ready for a nap after this....
Onto step two of the day. getting the rest of the gang fed... some young animals are still being tube fed and others are in "fish school" (getting older and need to move onto fish).... so volunteers tie a string to a fish and try to stimulate the seal's interest... sometimes it works and sometimes not. Our guide is Carol the fish mash master, she explains the concept of fish school and Lesley and I watch on. In the meantime there is a constant flow of visitors looking over on the upper deck (school groups, individuals.... its a great opportunity for the public to see what is going on). Later both Lesley and I were feeding and restraining for the afternoon feed.... Carol taught us how to make fish mash, and we were on our way. Tubes in hand with a list of elephant seals to see. Once this was over what was left was the breakdown of the kitchen and cleaning up the mess... can you say stink?
Carol - to tube, or not to tube? .... that is the question.
fish school with school group looking on
the aunties looking on at the students
no graduation day for this student.
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