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(Describer) Under a logo of three wavy lines over a curved V, titles: Aquarium of the Pacific – Career Connections.
(Describer) Against the background of an underwater scene with light filtering down, titles: Aquarist – Feeding Time. In front of a large aquarium...
Welcome to Career Connections
at the Aquarium of the Pacific.
My name's Alie.
Food is important
to our animals' lives.
We're going to meet
our aquarist, Angelina,
and learn how she takes care
of them and feeds them.
Angelina, one thing we haven't
talked about yet is food.
Food is important.
We all need to eat.
You make sure animals
get the food they need.
There are over
12,000 animals here.
How do you make sure
that everybody gets fed?
It's a lot of mouths to feed
and takes a team to feed them.
Restaurant-quality seafood
is prepared for our animals.
A variety of fish, shrimp,
squid, clam, mussels, oysters.
A little of everything
is thrown into the mix.
The food is prepared,
weighed, measured out,
and then delivered to specific
exhibits or specific fish.
So you get nice and smelly
and squiddy,
and you have these buckets
of raw seafood.
The exhibit behind us,
we have big and little fish.
How do you make sure
you get everybody there?
This exhibit takes
an entire team to feed it.
Aquarists at the surface
target-feed animals,
like our sharks, stingrays,
and sea turtle.
We have divers
that go underwater,
and they are scatter-feeding,
basically dispersing food out
for a big group of fish,
whether it's large
schooling fish or small fish
that they'll squirt worms
into the rockwork to eat.
Then some of our divers
will go swimming around
to target specific fish.
(Alie)
It is an orchestrated
effort,
with scuba divers
in the water,
people on the surface,
making sure
that everybody's eating.
We make sure
all the animals eat,
and it takes
our entire staff.
How often
does this happen?
Every day.
(Describer) The background changes.
Behind us are sea dragons.
These are
a really unique animal.
People love
seeing them here.
Can you tell us about the
challenges in keeping them fed?
(Describer) They have a long thin mouth.
(Angelina)
They have a small mouth.
We need to feed them
very small food.
Lucky for us,
they do eat frozen food,
but we do feed them live food,
something called mysids,
that we go out scuba diving
to collect locally.
And mysids are those little
shrimp-like crustaceans.
Really, really tiny.
Really, really tiny shrimp.
(Alie)
And there is a place where
we raise and grow them.
(Angelina)
We do have
a full-time aquarist
dedicated to taking care
of our live-food culture,
where we have
different plankton,
we have those mysid shrimps,
and we also grow algae
to feed some animals.
(Alie)
Little algae,
little shrimps,
little pieces of food.
I bet that's what
some of your babies eat.
Exactly.
When a fish first hatches,
it doesn't look
for frozen food.
We start them
on baby brine shrimp
or an even smaller plankton
called rotifers.
Thanks for joining us
for Career Connections today.
Hope you enjoyed learning
about feeding animals.
We look forward
to seeing you again.
(Describer) Accessibility provided by the US Department of Education.
Funding to purchase and make
this educational production
accessible was provided by the
U.S. Department of Education:
PH: 1-800-USA-LEARN (V)
or WEB: www.ed.gov.
