A Day In The Life Of A Sea Lion Trainer

all right good morning guys my name is Kim for those of you who don't know me I'm a California sea lion trainer here in the Foxwoods marine theater at Mystic Aquarium and today I thought I'd just give you guys a behind-the-scenes look at my job and what we do every day and before we hit the ground running with things like fish prep shows training sessions we're gonna do a lot today we up say hello to the lovely ladies back here let's check them out right there it looks like we have cigar visiting us so every day we just say hi to our girls that are in this pool and sometimes they say hello back sometimes they're very vocal you say welcome I do alright so now we said hi we're gonna head over into the kitchen and kind of get things running so stay tuned alright guys so here we are in our kitchen in the theater so my job today and we rotate jobs every day when we come in is I'm gonna be our fish prep routine so my job today if you see that white board way back there is to weigh out all the animals diets so you're about to see what 200 pounds of fish fish looks like going into different buckets today so hopefully you guys enjoy [Music] right so my job today is weighing out all the different buckets of fish that are sea lions are gonna eat every day so right now we are feeding our seedlings anywhere from five to six times a day today we're going to feed them five different times we have a mix of training sessions and shows so I just want to show you a little bit about what I'm putting into the buckets we have this fine fish capelin we also have a pretty big size fish called a herring and believe it or not they can swallow some whole doesn't bother them we also have everyone's favorite squid and some smaller types of fish these are anchovies same thing that would go on your pizza and Lake smell so this is what I'm going to be putting into the bucket I've got a little bit over another half hour to finish all the different buckets of fish we're going to be weighing out for our sea lines and right now each sea lion let's see then will eating about 10 to 15 pounds of fish a day and we have five sea lions so we're gonna go through a lot of fish this morning so let's go [Music] all right so we have finished our morning fish prep routine we'll come over here we have emptied our sink of fish we sell a little bit left to go out for the rest of the day so it's all restaurant quality fish that we feed our sea lions and what's about to happen is we have our interns and volunteers about to head in here to prep the first feed of the day for our sea line so we actually check every single one of the fish that we're gonna feed them but just to give you an idea of all the work we finally accomplished behind door number one we have all the buckets in our giant saw box today so this is what I was weighing and weighing out earlier today so they're all ready to go for a little bit later on and then in a little bit we'll go out for our first training session with the sea lions in about 10 15 minutes and we're about to have a huge cleaning party in here too super fun you're all gonna want to stainless steel kitchen when we're done all right so now we all ready for a big kitchen clean say hi everyone so this is just part of the team that's in for today usually on any given day we have about four or five trainers a few interns and some volunteers so we are about to have a cleaning party we're gonna clean the kitchen from top to bottom all the way to the floor everything that fish touched today so enjoy [Music] all right so hello everyone we're just in time for our very first feeding and training session with our California sea lions today so this is one of the most important sections of the day it's where we kind of do a little mini physical exam with our animals so the sea lion I get to work with today this skippers hip she is my favorite I love all the sea lines to get to work with but she definitely has a special place in my heart the look at her face it's adorable right yes it is so during this training session work in a bunch of different things so one of the very first things we do is again we're gonna give our animals for some quick once-over so looking into her parts of their body so I can have said open her mouth and check out 14 things gum make sure everything looks great good they can also look if there are parts of her body like their flippers you wanna do it [Music] the right guy can just kind of check over her entire body make sure she looks just as healthy and happy as she did last night working on this what we call a secondary reinforcer like follow with me but we're also more kinds of other behaviors that aren't quite done today so we're gonna both show behaviors just relationship building behaviors and then we call husbandry behaviors so veterinary care behaviors so those are those behaviors like when I was hoping Skip's mouth things that helped us take care son the one I'm working on his decent except to meet a lot of context have tactile on her eyes lay around beautiful if it should just allow me to walk back towards their hind end and manipulate anyone who want back here I'm just looking for him to be nice and relaxed right now look at our bloopers [Music] PIPP is the special animal she was the first animal I got to work with when she first came here I was here from day one and her quarantined after she came to us from the rescues out west so she is an amazing aunt she's a sweetheart to work with and just when you look at her little eyeballs in her little face I mean she'll still anyone's heart but I really enjoy working with her and watching her especially understand that new step in a behavior is magical water [Music] all right so another really fun part of my day it's one of my favorite parts is just coming to play with our sea lions we do a lot of enrichment with them and this can be providing things like toys so right now we're actually downstairs the underwater viewing for our sea lions someone is up top in the theatre also throwing in toys to the sea lions and we just have some fun visual enrichment so we'll see if the sea lions want to come play with us it's always their choice so we'll see how I'm using a ham today [Music] Kelly you what is this okay bye that's cool too all right so now it's kind of a quiet time in the middle of our day and I just want to take a minute of this vlog to kind of share with you guys why I think it's important that we're sharing this with all of you guys because it's no surprise if you couldn't tell already I absolutely love my job I mean if you haven't looked at the sea lions faces yet throughout this video today they're what make it worthwhile coming in every day but I think it's important that people can see the other side of things in the behind-the-scenes look at these animals and what actually goes into training them every day it is definitely a privilege working with these animals if you ask any read mammal trainer or animal caretaker across the country I'm pretty sure all of us would say it's a privilege to work with whatever species of animal we're working with every day when I get up these five California sea lions are on my brain I mean we're we're here on Christmas Day birthdays holidays we missed out on family events we're here overnight if an animals sick or injured or needs extra care so it's definitely a lifestyle it's not just a job or a career it's definitely a passion I've wanted to do this since I was you know five years old coming to the Mystic Aquarium myself and seeing all the animals and zoos and aquariums and getting inspired to want to get close with them so obviously there's that selfish part of me I love my job because I get to be so close to these animals every single day but there's a selfless part where I think it's really important that people get to learn about these animals they get to see what they're able to do and really form relationships because not everyone is as lucky to work as close as I do every day but we want to try to get people as close as they can so that way they want to protect these animals that's why I just want to take a minute just to kind of sit down pass that match to John because like I said I absolutely love what I do I'm happy you guys have watched us I hope you guys learn something through today about seeing what I do every day but they make it all worthwhile alright so right now it's a little bit before time for our first show of the day right now we're doing two shows a day every day with our California sea lions and in just a little bit all of these empty seats are gonna be filled with guests on our busy Sunday afternoon our afternoon so you guys can stay tuned for the show hope you guys enjoy [Music] alright guys so that was just a small snippet at what I do every day here at my job at Mystic Aquarium working with my fabulous sea lions back there hope you guys enjoyed seeing a behind-the-scenes look into my job and hopefully inspires you guys to come down and actually visit us live and in person come check out a sea lions show and say hello when you see me but for now sign it off bye everyone should like it suppose but looking to face it out of that's why my job is meaningful that right there what we battle hoses like Gandalf fighting works please let that begin there

Channel: Mystic Aquarium

Views: 120,690

Rating: 4.8908024 out of 5

Keywords: California sea lion, California sea lion trainer, Sea Lion Trainer, A Day in the Life of a Sea Lion Trainer, A Day in the Life of a California sea lion trainer, Mystic Aquarium, Aquarium Vlog, Zoo Vlog, Learn About Sea Lions, Learn About California sea lions, Learn About California Sea Lion Trainer

Id: wx5QCrIH09g

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 12 2019