Hard at work

Aloha all! I thought you might like to see what I've been doing on a daily basis, so I got some pictures of me working to show you what a typical day is like for a Sea Life Park vet tech intern.


This is Lambchop. She is a Hawaiian Monk Seal and I absolutely adore her; fins down, she's my favorite animal in the park. Behind her is Puiwa (pronounced PWEE-va) the Harbor Seal. She's alright, but she doesn't have as much personality as Lambie.



This is just a pretty rainbow I saw on my way to the bus stop to go to work.

Chuff slides and blood smears! These are a big part of my work. A chuff is when a dolphin clears its blowhole; its kind of like a sneeze. The blood smear is pretty self exlpanitory. We go out into the park to collect these samples, then back to the vet lab where it is my duty to prepare the slides, stain them, and then look at them under the microscope to see what there is to see.

Another big part of my job is meds. I sort meds out into little baggies to make sure everyone gets the right dose of the right med at the right time. Some people might find this tedious, but I enjoy it alot!

Holoiki (ho-lo-WEE-kee) is our other female monk seal. She has a wound on her belly so these are pictures of me helping Dr. Beth (the vet) and Celeste (the vet tech) to clean it out. We have to be very careful because these seals are truely wild animals and not as tame as the dolphins or sea lions, so they can be very dangerous if you don't treat them with respect.
From left to right: Dr. Beth, Holoiki, Celeste.





Well that's all for now. More later.

Aloha,

Jenna

Finally moved in!!

We finally moved into the Hina Hale house. I'm quite pleased. Our landlord wasn't very professional about the whole thing and we were all pretty peeved, but I won't even get into that. The house is really nice; unfortuately when we drew lots for room-picking order I got second to last, so I got shafted and had to take the really small room. Still, I'm pretty pleased overall. I have lots of pctures below, so enjoy.

Aloha,

Jenna

Aloha!

Hello all! Here I am in lovely Hawaii. It's been very interesting so far. On my first day I got stung by a jellyfish, got a 2nd degree sunburn, was nearly drowned, and got caught in a huge wave that scraped my face against the sand ( a picture of my booboo is below). On my second day, I tried poi. Poi is a paste made from the root pulp of the taro plant, and its really good for you; its has all the vitamins minerals and good stuff you need to survive. Unfortunately, it looks like gray silly putty and tastes like... well, like it came from a root. My second day was kind of rough, since I found out that mom and dad had to put Skippy to sleep. I miss my baby boy very much but thankfully I'm surrounded by animal lovers and they were all very supportive. I'm still healing day by day.

Work is fun! I do all kinds of fun lab procedures and I get to get really close to the animals- the other day I got to watch an ultrasound of an unborn baby dolphin! I also assist in blood draws, run tests, prepare slides, and twice a week I wake up at 4 am to spend four to six hours standing in a freezer sorting through 35,000 fish- that part isn't so fun.

On one of my days off a few of us went to Hanauma Bay to snorkle and see the fish- it was so gorgeous!! The rest of my time off has been spent being lazy. Eventually though, I plan to go surfing and see what else the island has to offer. More later.

Aloha,

Jenna