Spending their co-ops diving into the aquarium’s famous giant ocean tank and tending to the penguin colonies was a dream come true for lifelong animal lovers Elliot Tong and Noah Brown.
It’s feeding time, and Elliot Tong has a date with a sea turtle.
Diving into the depths of the New England Aquarium’s four-story giant ocean tank, Tong passes fish of every size and color. At the bottom, he pulls out what looks like a thermos and starts to shake it, creating a maraca-like noise. After ringing the dinner bell for slightly longer than expected, a loggerhead sea turtle emerges from the tank’s coral reefs and swims up to Tong, ready to gobble up a fish taco.
For Tong, it’s just another day on the job. However, despite going on close to 300 dives during his co-op as an aquarist for the aquarium, the experience has never lost its sense of wonder.
“Being in the water is just a completely different world, and it’s something that I relish,” says Tong, a marine biology student at Northeastern University. “Being able to be in the water has this kind of wow factor that it still has to this day.”
Tong, along with Noah Brown, an ecology and environmental science student working with the aquarium’s penguin team, is one of two Northeastern co-ops who is getting his feet wet with the kind of education and conservation work done at the New England Aquarium. It’s an opportunity for a pair of conservationists to pass on their passion for protecting marine life to the public.
“Working in a zoo or an aquarium really gives you the best opportunity to be hands-on working toward conservation with the animals themselves and it also gives you a lot of really awesome opportunities to educate people and interact with the public and have that front-facing aspect of it as well,” Brown says. “One thing that’s super motivating as well is that approach of, ‘I want to make you as excited about this animal as I am. I want to motivate you to want to conserve this animal just like I do.’”
Tong and Brown’s conservationist goals are lofty but also grounded in the day-to-day realities of making sure the aquarium’s many animals are happy and healthy. That starts with spending a lot of time with their hands in piles of fish preparing meals for the day.
At 8 a.m., Tong starts preparing the 32 pounds of food that go into the giant ocean tank –– and the stomachs of its 500 residents –– every day.
“It’s the thing that’s the most important and the thing that we try to get done the fastest because it’s the largest task,” Tong says.
Meanwhile, Brown is tasked with preparing a steady and varied diet of restaurant-quality fish for the aquarium’s penguin colonies, which include South African and rockhopper penguins. The penguins will typically eat about 10% of their body weight in fish every day, Brown says. They’ll also receive various supplements and vitamins, particularly as they get older.
After food prep, Tong and the other aquarists will don their diving gear for four dives, two for feeding and two for cleaning, in the giant ocean tank throughout the day. Brown spends the rest of his day making sure the penguins are fed, their exhibit is clean and they are up to date on their routine physicals and weight check-ins.
They are educators and conservationists but, above all, animal caretakers. Understanding the various needs and health conditions of the animals is a vital part of their jobs. That means becoming well acquainted with the many personalities and quirks of the animals.
“It’s so interesting to have a species that lives in these huge groups of colonies but then is, at the same time, very territorial,” Brown says of the penguins. “They function a lot more like neighbors than roommates. There’s a lot of social dynamics going on, a lot of fights going on. It’s a really busy colony.”
Although all the penguins have their own unique personalities, one penguin is a standout for Brown: Lambert. At 33 years old, Lambert is one of the oldest penguins in the aquarium and lives in the geriatric colony, a kind of penguin retirement home. He recently had one of his eyes removed due to chronic issues like glaucoma, but he is still one of the most relaxed members of the colony, Brown says.
The fish, rays and turtles in the giant ocean tank are another story entirely. Tong recalls how on his first dive into the tank he was struck by how most of the fish were “much more friendly than your average fish you’d find” in the wild. Many of them are more used to being around divers in the tank like Tong and will come up to them hoping to get some tasty treats. Trixie, a porcupine fish, is so interested in food that she will come up to divers and try to eat their gear, Tong says.
However, Myrtle, the aquarium’s green sea turtle and queen of the giant ocean tank, is Tong’s favorite and a reminder of how incredible marine life can be. Weighing 500 pounds, Myrtle has been at the aquarium since 1970 and is its most famous resident.
“Recently she’s been getting into a mood, but she really does like divers,” Tong says. “We have to distract her during the feeding dives, otherwise she’ll come up to us and either get the food or distract us because she really likes back scratches.”
Coming out of their co-ops, Tong and Brown say they are much more familiar with, and respectful of, the animals that provide the beating heart of the oceans. More importantly, they understand how valuable it is to get people energized about these creatures and their ability to continue living in the world’s oceans.
“The fact is a lot of people rely on [the oceans] and they protect us a lot with both reefs acting as barriers against storms and fish acting as a supplier of food and our economy,” Tong says. “Institutions like the aquarium here are able to both educate people on our impacts on the ocean as well as how the ocean impacts us.”