Down the Rabbit Hole

My Time as a Sea Urchin

30 Day Blogging Challenge
PROMPT May 6th
Write about a community service or volunteer experience you’ve had in your life that made an impact on you.

This prompt has me drawing a blank, and I am embarrassed to admit that. I don't know as I have had much opportunity to volunteer in my community for some time. I was however a Sea Urchin volunteer during my middle school years at our local aquarium. It was definitely an impactful experience. At the time I believed I was destined to be a marine biologist and I was convinced that gig volunteering at the aquarium would be the first milestone on my journey to scientific greatness.

My stint lasted over two consecutive summers. It was filled with surprising revelations, the first one being that I did not enjoy dealing with the larger marine vertebrates...at all. I would have thought that spending the afternoons with dolphins and sea lions would be the ultimate dream for a girl who modeled herself after Dr. Eugene Clark and Jacques Cousteau. In reality, those duties numbers among my least favorite. The dolphins were ill- tempered. They like to spit at my while I was mopping the marine stage. The sea lions had a lovely habit in sliding in their own poop piles and cleaning up after them was horrendous. They were also know to be a bit mouthy and I saw more than one Aquarist with nasty bites from dealing with them in close proximity.

The tasks I ended up enjoying the most were more menial in nature, which was equally as surprising to me. I loved working behind the exhibit tanks with the Aquarists, preparing the food gel and stuffing the fish with vitamins. It was smelly, messy work but I enjoyed it. I loved feeding the variety of fish and other marine species on display. There was a lumpfish who was so comfortable he would readily take bits of food from my hand and let me rub his head. I loved being on the inside of that world. I felt so proud walking through the door marked, "Designated Personnel" to the wide salon where the display tanks were all accessed from a door on the roof of each tank. One of my favorite spaces was the "closet" where they grew and cultured the brine shrimp that they would use to sustain many of the exhibits. It was a narrow space lined with large glass jars where microscopic shrimp grew in increasing sizes as you moved down the row. It buzzed and hummed with filters and machinery and seemed to me at the time to be a wonder of invention.

When I visit the aquarium now, much has changed. There are still some exhibits that are original to my time there, like the trout river and circular shark tank. The smell is there too, a strange mix of brine and chlorine and it always takes me back. It was a wonderful experience and I have a lot of stories from my time spent there.