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Cleaning with Sharks

¤ Newport Aquarium ¤ Among sharks ¤
¤ The volunteer programme ¤
¤ Work or pleasure? ¤ More than a job? ¤

Work or pleasure?

Sounds great so far? It is! However, you mustn't forget that these volunteers play an important part in the daily running of the aquarium. "We expect our volunteers to work at the aquarium for 4 -5 hours at least once a month," Jen Rehberger explains, "although most divers do, in fact, invest more time into their duties than that."

A typical day?

At the start of their working day the volunteers log into one of the terminals with their personal code. They then check the notice board for general messages and to see if there are any special requirements which need to be taken care of or need to be observed that day. "Although there are, of course, many routine jobs, there isn't really a typical day with the same jobs all the time. Our volunteers do whatever needs to be done on the day they come in." A typical job that needs to be done regularly is the production of the fish feed. As attractive as the job of a wet volunteer sounds in general - in this case it consists of (among other things) the cutting up of fish heads. In the preparation room there are instructions for each of the individual tanks, stating how much of what kind of feed has to be produced. After the job is done, the feed is put into the cold storage room for intermediate storage. The helpers also carry out the actual feeding of the fish.

As well as the food preparation, cleaning is one of the main jobs. If you have a small aquarium at home you can imagine how much work is needed to keep all those tanks of different sizes clean! Cleansing the plants, keeping the acrylic tunnels in a perfectly transparent state and hydro-cleaning the tank floors are therefore regular activities for the volunteers. Their fields of responsibility in this respect include the shark tank, coral reef, kelp forest and Amazon tanks.

Work, fun and knowledge

Apart from these more manual chores there is also the area of edutainment. The divers are supposed to entertain the visitors as well as pass on their knowledge on the plant and animal life within the aquarium. A big part of this is the dive show mentioned at the beginning of this article. The audience is seated in a cinema and is introduced to diving sign language by a presenter who also teaches the audience the big "OK" sign. Then the cinema screen is lifted and the audience sees right into the big shark tank through a huge acrylic window. A diver with a full face masks kneels on the tank's floor in front of the window; behind him or her there is a safety diver. After an exchange of OK-signs with the audience, the diver gives a short introduction to the big tank, followed by a round of questions. While the diver answers the questions and the sharks swim placidly above the divers' heads, sometimes the audience (in this case including me) can witness how the safety diver has to fend off nosy animals like a brash Loggerhead turtle! Later, while in the tunnel, when the visitors see divers, it is the smaller kids in particular who enthusiastically exchange OK signs with them. I can imagine that perhaps the foundation for a future dive career may be laid here.

The show started about a year ago and now runs successfully four days a week. In order to answer the audience's (and other visitors') questions competently, the volunteers need to have a wide range of knowledge. Their education is therefore not finished after completing the training programme, but is a continual process. Part of their time at the aquarium is spent observing the animals and extending their knowledge. Each time a different animal is studied closely so that over time the volunteers accumulate profound knowledge about each of the animals, knowledge which they can share with the visitors.

Part of this continuous training is also a diver exchange programme with other aquariums. Not only is this a chance for divers to get to know other aquariums in America and to get to know animals not kept in Newport, but by gaining insights into other volunteer programmes they expand their horizons and start to see themselves as part of a greater group.