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Sunday, August 8, 2010August 5th, 2010
I had to crank some Zeppelin on my iPod, but between the crisp morning air and "Ramble On" I woke up.
Breakfast was served quickly, some toasted bagels and coffee we'd picked up the day before at a Safeway grocery store. (Does anyone else think that's a really weird thing to name a grocery store? And what does that suggest about the other grocery stores? Tired of getting held up by hooligans while trying to buy your milk? Come to Safeway, where you don't have to carry a gun to buy your groceries.)Then it was off to the first stop of the day, the Alaskan Sealife Center. We pulled up just outside, the parking lot for the place running along the edge of Resurrection bay.
Today was the first day of the trip that we saw the sun peak his face out from behind the clouds. I'd try to describe to you what we saw looking out on the bay, but that would be silly. I took pictures.
That's gorgeous. I could have stayed seated down on the rocks by the bay for the rest of the day, and that day wouldn't have been waisted.
I got up, however, and followed my family into the sea center. We stood in line for a while, got ourselves some tickets and went off to check out the place. On the first floor there was a gift store with various gifts and keepsakes that reminded me of things I'd seen in the Oriental Trading magazines as a kid. Outside a few vendors sold pieces of art depicting Alaskan wildlife. I also found this hilarious documentary narrated by a little kid, who has,no doubt, melted the hearts of countless little old ladies with his haphazard reading abilities.
Upstairs was where the real action was, tanks and displays filled with underwater wildlife. I especially liked the various crabs I saw in the tanks. One of them had a dark blue carapace which almost glowed the way it reflected light.
I also found this boat.
I must have been possesed by the spirit of a dead sailor, because for the next half hour I found myself making desparaging remarks about landlubbers and the insufferable state of the fishing industry.
There were some other cool things deeper inside the center. One area had an enclosure where you could touch various beneign sea life, which of course reacted to your presence. Some sort of tentacally thing wrapped an appendage around my finger.
There were also some bigger tanks that housed bigger wildlife including a couple of breeds of seal. I can't recall the big guy's name, but as I approached one of the tanks to take a look inside, this massive seal, he was probably five to ten times my size, came swelling up towards the surface. As he breached, his head glanced my way and he wiggled his wiskers at me.
Then he flipped onto his back and rolled off under the water again, probablly to show off for the people looking at the tank from the lower level. There were also a couple of smaller harbor seals in an adjacent tank. They were fun to watch, and I couldn't help myself but smile as they darted through the water.
There were a few other things to do as well, there was an enclosure with a bunch of birds inside that I glanced at. Somehow I managed to miss the poke the octopus exibit. Eventually I found myself back downstairs where I waited for the tour guide who would take me and the family on the "behind the scenes" tour of the facility.
We gathered, my family, another pair of people, and finally the tour guide and went back through a pair of professional looking double doors.
While the front part of the facility served as an aquarium and teaching facility, the back half was devoted to animal rescue, rehabilitation, and research. I won't bore you with the details, but I will say it tickled the fancy of the biology side of my brain.
The best part of the tour was when the animal handlers took us out back to where they kept the animal tanks, inside which there were more seals. After explaining a bit about the seals and the care they received at the facility, the handlers gave us a demonstration of a training session.
Now, when the handlers had originally brought us outside they took us to a holding cage that sat next to the pools. In the background, as tourguide spoke, a seal swam around in his pool, peaking his head out to watch us. At one point he popped out of the water onto the smooth concrete and bounced over, hopping on his side, towards the edge of the cage facing us. He shortly lost interest however and went back to his pool. That was at least until the handler brought out a buclket filled with fish.
It was pretty neat, I've alwasy been curious how animal training works. The demo she did for us was she had the seal point himself at the little white thing, and after he did, he got a tastey fish.
She also had him roll over, bark and whatnot. While that was interesting, what I thought was more interesting was how she got him to do those activites in the first place. I mean think about it. How do you get an animal that can't understand a word you're saying to do what you want?
Enter the capture method. What the animal handlers do is watch for certain behaviors they want the animal to do on command to occur naturally. When that behavior does occur, they rush out and give the animals some fish to reward the behavior. At some point the animal learns to associate certain behaviros with awards.
There can be some unintended consequences though. The handler said that it was pretty cool when she taught the seal she was working with how to bark, right up until it spent the next day barking in hopes of getting more fish.
Well, I think that will about wrap it up for this entry. This post is getting a little out of control as far as length goes, so I'll put the rest of the day into another post soon forthcomming. Stay tuned. In the afternoon we'll go on a tour of a dog sledding outfit and take a hike up to see a glacier in the mountians. You'll also get to hear about this attractive dog sledding girl I met.(She was the tour guide) Apparently the techniclal term is musher, but that term still hasn't settled comfortabley into my vocabulary yet.
2 comments:
You know the best way to keep me reading is to make your cliffhanger a picture of an attractive musher girl.
I love your Captain Ahab face when you're in the boat.
--Rachel, using Amanda's username because she can't remember the password to her own blog.
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