The beginning of anything new and exciting always seems to end up in a blur and last week at the Visitor Center was no exception.  What has struck me most since starting my internship is how much work goes on behind the scenes to make the doors open every day at 10am.  When I show up around 9:30 to turn on all the lights, the ball has already been rolling for a few hours for the aquarists.  Their job is to make sure all the tanks in the Visitor Center as well as in back are working properly.  Recently they have had issues with herring dying over night for some unknown reason.  I was able to work an aquarist and fish out the dead herring from an 8ft tank just before visitors started arriving.  It doesn’t sound like much but when you couple that with leaking shrimp displays, overflowing touch tanks, and whatever else the morning brings, it can be quite the adventure.  Troubleshooting these issues everyday really keeps the doors open to the public.

Last week was also a lot of firsts for me and the most interesting was definitely the estuary tour.  We (the VC interns) give estuary tours at 11am every day to whoever wants to go.  My first tour had an elderly husband and wife as well as a mother with her two kids.  It was pretty fun trying to juggle the interests of the kids and adults.  I ended up using the “slurp gun” to dig out some shrimp from the estuary to keep the kids fascinated and then explained more about how HMSC functions to the adults.  Overall it went really well and I think everyone had a pretty good time.

Lastly, the most interesting thing I found out this week wasn’t at the Visitor Center but actually up at Kelly’s Brighton Marina near Manzanita.  After catching and boiling a crab, I had the privilege of eating the heart of the crab as well as the crab butter.  The butter was comprised of all the liquified crab fat.  When the crab is done boiling, you flip is over, open the carapace, and voila you have crab butter.  It goes on anything!