Hi scientists! My name is Lee-Roy Haarhaus.
And I'm Sean Eckley. We are two of the assistant dive safety officers here at the California
Science Center. It's our job to oversee the day-to-day scuba diving operations that happen
in our exhibit. The ocean environment is full of scientific discovery, amazing animals, and fun!
Many people use scuba as a tool to explore science—from astronauts,
aquarists, and explorers just like you! Come with us and we'll show you how we
use scuba to stimulate curiosity and inspire science learning in everyone.
Oh, hi there! I was just watching our scuba divers working in our Kelp Forest exhibit.
Like many of you, we'd love to come to the California Science Center to explore life
underwater, see a kelp forest or coral reef up close, and interact with our scuba divers.
Here in the living collections department, we use scuba diving as a tool to clean
and maintain exhibits, feed our aquatic animals, and provide medical care to sick fish. We even
use it to conduct scientific research and collect the kelp you see in our exhibits!
it's our job in the dive safety office to make sure that our scuba divers are able to complete
their tasks while staying safe throughout their dive. Now, you might be wondering how much scuba
diving actually happens at the California Science Center, and where do we dive? Well, in
this episode we're going to take you behind the scenes to show you where our scuba divers work,
what they do to keep the animals healthy, and what we do to keep our divers safe. Are you guys ready?
Let's go! Our first stop on our journey is our dive locker. Every diving operation we do here
at the California Science Center begins and ends here. This is where our scuba divers can set up
their equipment, get briefed on the tasks they'll be doing, and make sure that they are ready for the
dive ahead. If you look inside our dive locker, we have every piece of gear a scuba diver could want—
fins, gloves, boots, weight belts, regulators, buoyancy compensator devices (or BCDs for short), and of
course wetsuits, which we'll talk about in another video. Once our divers are geared up, briefed about
the dive, and have completed their buddy checks to make sure that each diver's gear is secured
and working properly, it's time to splash! The exhibit we do most of the in-house diving in is our
Kelp Forest exhibit. There is a lot of tasks to do in our Kelp Forest exhibit every day.
Our scuba divers have to clean our exhibit, feed our fish, and present our dive shows.
It is not uncommon for our divers to do up to six dives per day here inside of our Kelp Forest exhibit.
That is a lot of diving! Thankfully we have roughly 50 dive volunteers,
eight aquarists, and two life support technicians who all work together as a team to make sure
all of our necessary diving gets done. Even in our shallow Rocky Shore exhibit, there's
still some diving to do. You may run into one of our divers snorkeling around the exhibit, taking
care of the animals there. Now, the Kelp Forest exhibit might be where we do most of our diving,
but even in our Island Zone reef tank, we still have plenty of diving to do. Every few days you
might see one of our aquarists diving inside here to take care of our tropical corals and fish.
They use a specialized type of SCUBA gear called a hookah rig instead of having a tank on their back.
They are connected to their tank on the surface with a long air hose. It's their top-side tender's
job to keep an eye on them. So far we've explored the exhibits you can see during your next visit,
but some of the diving that we do happens behind the scenes. Let's take a look!
When a sick fish or animal needs medical care, rest and relaxation, or needs to be taken off exhibit,
we take them to our quarantine holding tanks. In these tanks our divers can work with them
one-on-one to better care for their needs until they are ready to go back on display. As you can
see, there really is a lot of diving that happens at the California Science Center. On average we do
almost 6,000 dives a year, most of which is here at the Science Center. Talk about diving! Hopefully
the next time you guys visit us you'll get to see our divers keeping our animals happy and healthy.
Tune in next time for Diving into Science as we explore—how does SCUBA gear work? See you then!