(upbeat music)
- Good morning guys, I'm Jason Jones,
one of the associate curators here at the Georgia Aquarium.
Our doors are currently not open to the public
but we're gonna go behind-the-scenes and take a peek
and see how we're caring for our animals
while we're closed.
I'm right now about to walk into the building
but social distancing is one of the most important factors
as we have come to learn recently.
And so I'm going to be putting on my facemask
before interacting with any of the people.
One of our team members moms actually constructed
these face masks out of fabric and have given them to us.
So that's a really awesome way to
help protect ourselves and keep us safe.
We've divided our staff into two different teams,
a red team and a blue team
that enables us to work for several days in a row
without crossover and that's true
for all areas within the building.
- [Man With Glasses] Good morning, Jason.
How are you? - Good morning, good,
how are you? - Not too bad, all right.
- [Jason] Every day we get a wristband
and each day has a different corresponding color
so that all of the security knows
that we are here on the appropriate day
and where we're supposed to be.
I am now headed up to my office
and we are gonna check in and get ready for the day.
Oh good morning, Jen.
- [Jen] Good morning, Jason.
- [Jason] I am all checked in, so now
I'm just gonna pop on my boots
and we'll head downstairs and check in on the penguins.
So it looks like some of our trainers
are doing a quick session with some of our harbor seals.
Good morning guys.
- [Woman] Good morning.
- [Jason] How's it going?
- [Woman] So far, so good.
- [Jason] All right, time to go on downstairs
and check on the penguins.
Here we are at my home base,
right in front of our African penguin habitat.
While we have made some slight modifications,
it's business as usual for cleaning
and maintaining the habitat here at the Georgia Aquarium.
Hi Tamu.
I don't really think that the penguins notice too much.
We're still going out and interacting with them.
We're still feeding them a couple times a day.
We're still going out to the habitat and cleaning
so they may not notice as many people
out in the habitat, but in general,
I don't think that they notice too much of a difference.
Courtney, one of our trainers, is doing
an interactive enrichment session
where she is moving a bubble wand around
in an attempt to get some bubbles
for the penguins to interact with.
This is something that we as animal caretakers do
every single day.
We look for opportunities to engage with our animals,
find novel things that are different than the norm
and it's a really great way to provide
some mental stimulation and physical activity
for them as well
here at the Georgia Aquarium we have African penguins
and we've been really fortunate to partner with
SANCCOB which is an institution out in South Africa
where they rescue and rehabilitate
various seabirds, including African penguins.
So a couple of years ago I had the fortunate opportunity
to travel out there and do some chick bolstering
and work with their rescue penguins
before releasing them which was
a pretty awe-inspiring experience.
Right now we're headed into the back of our penguin habitat
so I can check on our little, they're not really
chicks anymore, our juvenile penguins
that hatched this year.
These guys are growing and changing really quickly.
We're noticing that there personalities
are starting to emerge.
Some of them are little bit more shy,
some of them are very outgoing,
they're all though very vocal.
They're still at the point where they're eating lots of food
and growing pretty quickly.
But they're getting close to full-grown size.
They grow from hatchling to the size right here
within three months.
Developing a strong relationship with the penguin
enables us to train them to let us
look at their wings or open up their mouths
or look at the bottoms of their feet,
touch them all over.
We built this relationship of trust
and so they allow us to do all these different things
and right now my relationship
is reinforcing enough for them.
So I don't have any fish to give her now,
but I can use this relationship as a way
to reinforce a reward for good behavior, huh?
Pretty unique family tree and we're excited
to watch them grow up.
All right guys, time to go check in on our adults.
Right now I'm stepping out onto
the African penguin habitat just to take a peek
and see what all of our adults are doing.
Most of them are just kinda hanging out.
Now the facemasks are something
that they're kinda getting use to.
We'll see if they react to them.
But Chiku seems pretty comfortable hanging out.
Even though we're closed to the public
it's still really important that we maintain the facility.
What are you doing, man?
Hi buddy, hi handsome.
This is Gibson, one of our rescued southern sea otters.
Working with the animal teams behind-the-scenes,
I don't often get the opportunity
to walk through the aquarium and see different aspects
in different galleries, particularly
when the public isn't here.
So I'm right now walking into our Ocean Voyager tunnel
and I get this awesome opportunity
to take a minute to myself and just zen out
amongst all these awesome creatures
that are swimming around me.
Hey Tank.
Tank is one of our green sea turtles
who is in our Ocean Voyager habitat.
I don't generally get the opportunity
to see him too often as I'm not down in the galleries,
usually working behind the scenes,
but it's a really awesome opportunity
for me to walk into a super quiet gallery
and just enjoy the serenity and peace that exists.
It's really sad that we don't have guests here
filling the space but for a minute or two
it's a pretty awesome opportunity for me.
So right now I'm walking into our Ocean Voyager gallery
right in front of our most iconic giant windowpane
that looks directly into this habitat
which is 6.3 million gallons of water
and has umpteen species of fish, whale sharks,
manta rays, spotted rays, but, I mean,
this is just unbelievable.
It really is a window into another world
and we're definitely excited to be able to
share this with you guys again in the future.
Right before I get back to work I'm stopping
at our tropical barrier reef habitat.
And this is a really good reminder for me
to let you guys know that a lot of your local
zoos and aquariums around the country
are also going through this troubled time
and they rely heavily on your support.
So we encourage you to reach out to them
or look onto their websites or Facebook pages
for more information about how you can contribute.