Behind the Scenes Tours

My favorite part of the internship by far has been the behind the scenes tours. I did both of my two tours this week. The first was at Discovery Cove. We were given the opportunity to see the fish room, where the prepare the food for each of the dolphins. To my surprise each dolphin doesn't eat that much per day, I think the average was 18lbs of food. We were walked right up to the trainer entrance to the dolphin pools where the dolphins swam right up to say hello. It amazes me how much they love people. The pools are for the dolphin swim attraction at the park and the dolphins not in use hang out near the employee entrance/dock. The rest of the park was beautiful, lots of sandy beach area and swimming holes. I have made reservations for myself to be a guest there on Monday. My friend, Audrey, will be here today and she will join me on Monday. I'm very excited and I'll be sure to post a few pictures of the park.
Today I had my second tour, It was an Education sneak peak. The education department teaches guests about the animals in our park and leads the special behind the scenes tours that guests can purchase at an extra charge. Today my tour was a variation of one of those guest tours. We visited the rescue center. SeaWorld has rescued thousands of animals and currently with the oil spill we have a full house. Sea Turtles take up a lot of our tanks right now, along with the manatees and dolphins. What I found interesting is that we bottle feed our orphaned manatee pups. SeaWorld designed its own bottle. Behind the scenes at the Shark Encounter (SeaWorld attraction) was extra amazing. They had a small shark out for us to pet! After touching the shark we walked up above the attraction to see what goes on above the aquarium. SeaWorld offers guests the opportunity to dive into the shark encounter inside a cage with special dive helmets, and we saw how that worked. I wish that my tour included the shark dive, that would have been incredible.
I'm sad that I don't have any more tours to do, they have been my favorite days at work. I have one more class and one more seminar. The seminar is with the zoological department, it should be good. Lets hope they bring an animal with them!
Off now to pick Audrey up from the airport. Talk to you soon. Home in 2 weeks!!