There are a few reasons why I LOVE working here. #1: We have a beautiful ecosystem in the Sound and it’s a privilege to be able to show people that. #2 I love to show people new things and let them experience it for the first time. And #3, the Seattle Aquarium is a world class facility doing groundbreaking work every day. More on this last one at the bottom.
But first! You may notice it’s not Saturday (which is when I work). This is because unfortunately I will be going home for the three day weekend and won’t be working this weekend. BUT I had a field trip for my Invertebrate Zoology class to, guess where..THE AQUARIUM!
I haven’t been to the aquarium as a visitor since I started working here and oh my goodness. It’s really hard not to go into work mode. I’d hear someone ask a question and I’d want to answer it for them instead of letting the interpreters on shift do it. They’ve shifted things and added a few new animals in preparation for tomorrow’s octopus blind date, including a 6 month old Giant Pacific Octopus. It was freaking adorable. Some more news from the baby animal world-our Long Finned Sculpin has laid her fourth batch of eggs in the past month and a half. She’s just popping them out like crazy! The first and second batch are mostly hatched now, but the third is getting eyes in!
Now on to the really really freaking awesome and exciting news which I’m allowed to talk about now since the PR department officially released it. To preface why the Seattle Aquarium is so groundbreaking-we’ve been the first to successfully breed a Giant Pacific Octopus from egg to a mature 3 year old adult, the first to successfully breed sea otters in captivity, and the first to have a salmon ladder. And now we add another first to that!
Meet the ratfish!
Photo courtesy of the Seattle Aquarium.
This is a 6 month old ratfish. Ratfish are closely related to sharks and rays, although they don’t look like it. What’s so special about this guy is that after 12 year of hard work, the Aquarium was able to successfully hatch a ratfish and have it live longer than 24 hours! This is huge huge news for us, especially since so far he’s doing pretty well. We’ve had him in the tank for about 3 weeks now. So if you go to the aquarium, make sure to stop by and look at him! We also have adult versions in our underwater dome.
So yeah. The Seattle Aquarium is super awesome and I love it here.
Here’s a link to the blogpost by the aquarium about the rat fish and a few pictures I took today on my field trip.
http://blog.seattleaquarium.org/conservation/a-new-fish-and-a-milestone-for-the-aquarium/
