Sting Rays, Ghost Stories, and Foliage

For those of you who have not taken some time to visit the Greater Cleveland Aquarium down in the West Flats, I highly advise that you do so. For my project, I will be working with four different departments at the aquarium; guest services, artistic productions, education, and animal husbandry. So far, I have worked with the guest services and artistic productions departments.

Day 1

On Wednesday, after a very brief tour of the aquarium, I headed over to the "Coastal" exhibit as a part of the guest services team to help educate guests about the different coastal life that the aquarium has in its tanks, as well as play with the sting rays in the 11,000 gallon, 4 ft deep circular touch pool. There are three types of rays in the touch pool, Cownose stingrays, Southern stingrays, and Atlantic stingrays, as well as two horn sharks. The best part about the touch pool is that you can really see the kinds of personalities that these animals have and how much they love to interact with people. For example, the Cownose rays LOVE to be pet!!

Belly of a Southern Ray - it's so cute!

Unfortunately, when there weren't people roaming or children running around this exhibit, it got a little boring. To pass the time, my co-workers joyfully shared very secret, said-to-be-true ghost stories about the aquarium's haunted past. I am still skeptical, however, despite the fact that there was an alleged encounter with the ghost of a little girl wearing a traditional looking dress in the shark tube that same day. I also spent much of the day gawking at the seahorses and the newest resident of the aquarium, a 1 year old Giant Pacific Octopus.

New facing for the fish tank

Day 2

Thursday involved much more physical work than the day before. I worked with the artistic productions crew, led by a burly man by the name of Bruce. The crew has been crazy busy working to renovate the "Ohio Lakes and Rivers" exhibit which will be finished Memorial Day weekend. So, I worked with one of the employees, Amber, hanging real branches with fake leaves from the ceiling with zip ties to create a pseudo forest canopy look and feel. We rightfully dubbed ourselves the creators of the forest. There still is a lot of work to be done, like finishing the facing for the tanks, completing the new wall of tanks for the new snakes, and much much more!