(upbeat intro music)
- Hi, I'm Miss. Penny from KidVision PreK
and we're here today to find out
what a marine biologist does.
Let's break the word down.
So, let's talk about what marine means,
what biologist means and what a marine biologist means,
what do you do?
I'd like to start with you please.
If you could tell us your name.
- My name is Keith Herman,
I'm the senior aquarist here at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center.
- And what does marine mean?
- [Keith Herman] Marine is the study of
a salt water environment.
So it'll be something like the ocean.
- And your name please?
- I'm Whitney Crowder,
I'm a sea turtle rehabilitation coordinator.
- And how about biologist?
- That would be the study of life on Earth.
- And please tell us your name
and what does marine biologist mean?
- I'm David Anderson,
I'm the sea turtle conservation coordinator
here at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center
and a marine biologist is one who studies
all life in the ocean or in other salt water environments.
- So what specifically do you do?
- [Keith Herman] I take care of the fish here
in the aquariums, we make sure they're happy,
healthy and well fed.
- [Whitney Crowder] And I manage the sea turtle
rehabilitation center, so I'm in charge
of all of our rescues of sea turtles,
all of the rehab and release of our sea turtles.
- [Davis Anderson] I monitor all five miles
of Boca Raton beaches for all the sea turtle
nesting activity that takes place.
We look for evidence that sea turtles
came out of the water overnight
and we mark the location of the nest
and protect them all the way through until they hatch.
- What motivated you or inspired you
to pick your field of work?
- My parents like to tell me a story
that when I was little,
they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up
and I told them I wanted to be a killer whale.
I didn't quite make killer whale,
but taking care of fish is pretty close.
- My family use to spend vacations
at the beach all the time,
so I was very interested in all the activity
that was taking place along the beach.
So when I was in college,
I began studying sea turtles
and then when I moved to South Florida,
I began volunteering at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center
and now I get to work here
and protect the sea turtles that's on our beach.
- And how about you?
- Every since I was a little girl,
I've wanted to be a voice for animals
and now I can be.
- Well, I'm very excited to be at Gumbo Limbo
to learn more about what marine biologist do
and we're going to spend a little bit of our day
with each of you so we can find out more
about what you do.
- Sounds great. - That sounds great.
- Good, I think we're going to start on the beach.
(upbeat music)
So we're on the beach, how do we know
that this is a turtle nest?
- [David Anderson] So our teams sees
turtle tracks in the sand where the female
has dragged her heavy body out of the ocean
up onto the beach to deposit her eggs in the sand
and we follow those tracks up to where the eggs are
and we proceed to mark the nest accordingly.
- About how many nest are made during nesting season?
- [David Anderson] We have three species
and it will all add up to about 1,000 nest
by the end of the summer.
She comes up and she lays her eggs,
she will return back to the water
and she will go and rest and feed,
and forage, and sleep, and for a couple weeks,
and believe it or not, she will come back
and lay another nest.
The same female turtle may lay multiple nest in one summer.
So, she may lay four, five or even six nests.
- [Miss. Penny] How many eggs are in each nest?
- [David Anderson] Each nest has about 100 eggs in it.
- [Miss. Penny] So that's like 600 eggs for one mom.
- [David Anderson] Exactly.
- We must have a large turtle population.
- Well turtles are endangered species
and we must do what we can to conserve
the turtles and of course protect the nest.
- [Miss. Penny] And when the babies come out,
how many of them make it to the water?
- [David Anderson] Well, of the hundred eggs,
normally only 90 of those hundred might hatch,
most of them might actually make it to the water,
but once they get into the ocean,
there are a lot of predators out there,
but some of the things that might prevent
them from getting to the water
are some of the predators that are on land.
We do have foxes and raccoons.
But one of the biggest problems
is artificial light pollution.
Hatchlings use the glow in the sky
to find their way to the ocean.
- [Miss. Penny] Oh because they think it's the moon.
- [David Anderson] They think it's the moon,
the stars and all that reflecting off of the water.
But now unfortunately the glow in the sky
is occurring over land.
So the turtles come out and they're confused
and they may actually turn around
and go toward the dunes instead of the water.
- [Miss. Penny] Oh no, so how do you mark it then
so that people know not to go near it?
- Well, we have on our nest,
orange stakes around it and we have an orange ribbon
marking the perimeter of where
our best estimate of where the eggs are
and we put a yellow sea turtle nest sign
on the front of our nest.
So when people are going up and down the beaches,
you can see, you know where the nest is located
and know to stay clear of it.
- Are there other things that people can do to help?
- [David Anderson] People can prevent light from
shining onto the beach at night.
Whether it's outdoor lighting at your home
or not using a flashlight on the beach.
It's very important to keep our beaches
nice and dark at night.
We can reduce the amount of plastic we use.
We often find turtles with plastic in their stomachs
particularly what we call post-hatchlings,
turtles that have hatched out of their nest,
gone and lived a few weeks out in the ocean
and then unfortunately consumed lots
of tiny bits and pieces of plastic.
They become sick and weak and they wash up on the beach
and sometimes beach goers, just like you may find one
and they call us and we will take it into our rehab center.
We also treat turtles that have been struck by boats
and we have turtles that are just sick
like we get sick, turtles get sick
and when they are well, we release them back into the ocean.
- Perfect, I would love to see the rehabilitation center.
- That sounds great, I look forward to taking you there.
- Alright.
(upbeat music)
- Right now, we're in the rehabilitation facility
because we're going to find out about this turtle.
We have a marine biologist with us
and a veterinarian and they've been working
on this turtle trying to make her well.
So let's find out what was wrong with her
and how she's getting better.
- So this is a green sea turtle, her name's Gamora
and when she came to us
she was very thin and she was sick
and she had tumors on her,
on her flippers and her eyes and her shell
and they get a disease called Fibropapillomatosis,
which you can call FP.
- How do we take off the tumor?
- We have to take them to surgery
and we have to cut the tumors off.
- And I see you have FP honey, what is that for?
- Well, FP stands for Fibropapilloma,
we use honey to help wounds heal.
So we rub honey all over that wound
and then we'll leave her out of the water
for maybe 10 minutes and let it do its job.
- Let's talk about her body parts,
what is she checking now?
- [Maria Chadam] See her eyes?
- [Kid] The eyes.
- [Maria Chadam] Making sure she
doesn't have any tumors on her eyes,
because tumors like to grow on their eyes
and the tumor can get so big,
that they can't see.
- She's a sea turtle, so she's underwater.
And she has a nose so how does she breathe?
- They have lungs just like we do,
so they actually breathe air
and that's why turtles sometimes end up here
because they get hit by things like boats
when they come up to take a big breath of air in the ocean.
- We're going to lift her up and look at her underside.
She had tumors here, you can see scars.
She had a big tumor here on her shell.
The shell is bone covered by a layer called keratin.
It's like their skin so they shed it
and they have feeling in their shell.
- How big is she going to get?
- She's going to get very large, up to 400 pounds.
- As a marine biologist, you're studying these turtles
and so what are you learning from this particular turtle?
- Well, we've learned that this disease
is very common in green sea turtles
and all the sign point to dirty water
as being the source of why they're getting sick.
- What can these children do to make things
better for the sea turtles?
- Well, you can try to not use
so much plastic in your house.
You can buy a water bottle that
you can fill and refill, right?
Use little containers that you can wash.
We wanna plastic, or metal, or glass
that we can use again and again, right?
Because some of our turtles eat plastic
and they get very sick.
- After you've treated a turtle
and you feel like they're getting better,
what's the next step?
- Well, we look at different things
like if they're gaining weight,
we take blood and make sure
they don't have signs of infection
and then we decide if they're healthy enough
to go back out into the ocean.
- Do you treat other animals besides turtles?
- We have fish, which I don't specialize
in treating fish, but I did do surgery
on one of our pufferfish once to remove a hook.
- So you have an aquarium here also?
- Yes, we do.
- I think that's our next stop.
- Have fun.
- Thank you so much for telling us about rehabilitation.
- You're welcome.
- Bye Gamora.
(upbeat music)
- Today, we've been at Gumbo Limbo
learning a lot about what marine biologist do.
It's so interesting to find out
how they rescue and take care, rehabilitate turtles.
What do you do here at the aquarium?
- So all of our fish are from the wild.
We call them ambassadors for their wild cousins.
Not everyone is able to go out into the wild
to see these beautiful animals
so we are recreating their environment here
so you can come and enjoy them.
- What kind of fish do you have here?
- [Keith Herman] This is what
we are calling our coral reef tank,
so we have a lot of reef dwelling creatures
including wrasse, parrotfish, angelfish, tangs,
and our large eel that might come up
and eat for us here.
- I hope the eel comes.
- Me too.
- Alright, who is your helper?
- This is Bryan Danson, he's the other half
of our aquarium team here at Gumbo Limbo.
He and I take care of the aquariums
and keep the fish happy and healthy,
- And what are we feeding them?
- [Keith Herman] Small silver fish called capelin
and pink shrimp from the Florida Keys.
(upbeat music)
Are you guys ready to help us feed some sting rays?
- Yeah!
- We're going to feed them one at a time.
Just to make sure that everybody gets a chance.
We're also going to keep track of who's eating
so that we know that everybody's had a chance to eat.
Mr. Bryan's going to give you some fish
and we're going to get you to feed them.
(upbeat music)
- Thank you very much for showing us
how to take care of fish
and how to feed them well
and so that they live a long natural life here
and other people can see who they are.
- You are so welcome.
Thanks for visiting us.
- Today we were at Gumbo Limbo
learning about marine biologist.
What do marine biologist do?
- Take care of animals that live in the ocean.
- That's right and how can we help them?
- By not using more plastic.
- That's right.
Thumbs up for marine biologist.
Great job.
Thank you, bye.
(upbeat outro music)