New Exhibit: Our Living Coastline

Brooke Hernandez joins us today to discuss Our Living Coastline, the Aquarium's newest touch exhibit! Get the inside scoop on how this immersive, accessible habitat came to life and why it’s a must-see.

Acronym Key:

• OLC: Our Living Coastline
• GPO: Giant Pacific octopus
• AOP: Aquarium of the Pacific
• AZA: Association of Zoos and Aquariums

Episode resources:

• ⁠Transcript⁠
• Follow ⁠@podcific⁠ on Instagram!
• Email us at podcific@lbaop.org
• Learn more about Our Living Coastline
• Brooke’s Rockfish Survey Trip + Vlog
• Crab Construction

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hi, I'm Erin Lundy. And I'm Madeline Walton, and this is Aquarium of the Podcific, a podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, Southern California's largest aquarium.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Join us as we learn alongside the experts in animal care, conservation, and more. Welcome back to Aquarium of the Podcific. I'm Erin Lundy, the Aquarium's Conservation Initiatives Manager, and I am joined by my co-host, Madeline Walden.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

I am the Aquarium's digital content and community manager. And today we are talking about our very exciting new exhibit, Our Living Coastline. It is a new touch habitat that is outdoors. It took the place of the Ray Pool. It's out on California Terrace. And there are our penguins and our seals and sea lions. But don't worry, there's still rays that you can touch at the aquarium. People are very concerned. And our bat rays, we talk about it in this episode, but don't worry, the bat rays are just fine. They are now in our Honda Blue Cavern habitat. And I will say that several times in this episode because we have big fans of our Bat Rys. But I think you're gonna be those fans are gonna eventually become fans of this new habitat because it's really cool. It is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Our Ray habitat and Ray Touchpool area was pretty neat, and I do admit that I sometimes miss seeing those giant bat rays right outside of the Seal and Sea Line feeds. But I will say that the silhouette of our Living Coastline, which is our new exhibit that's taken its place, is beautiful. And I feel like it's been such an improvement, and it really makes the aesthetics of the aquarium much improved, which I know it's not what we're prioritizing, but is certainly a huge component of why I think it's become so popular already. There's tons of invertebrates, it is a touch area. People are very happy to discover that there is a new touch pool, but it's a really cool habitat. We're gonna be talking to Brooke today, and she is the primary keeper for this exhibit and was a huge part of kind of creating this habitat and getting all of the animals in. And she now manages almost 1,000 animals that live in our living coastline. Just a thousand. Just casual thousand.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, exactly. Brooke was on a previous episode of Aquarium of the Pacific. You may recognize her from our octopus episode because she also oversees our giant Pacific octopus habitat. That was the day I brought a cricket into the recording studio.

unknown 2:11

I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

It was in my shortcut. I think I cut it in. It's in. Oh, it's in there? Okay, good. For sure, good.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

I've heard it recently and I was like, oh yeah, there was a bug on me, and Brooke was the one who pointed out. While we were recording, she's a real one.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

She's a real one. She is. So we're happy to have her back. She's also working on a lot of other cool things outside of this new habitat. So we're gonna learn all about what's happening in Brooke's world. A Brooke update. Spoiler alert, it's crab prosthetics.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Hang out for a little bit if you want to hear more about crab prosthetics. Because that honestly is fascinating in and of itself. But we have got a packed full episode, just like we've got a packed full OLC, Our Living Coastline, full of invertebrates, just like our episode today.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Welcome back to Aquarium of the Podcific. Today we have on Aquarius Brooke Hernandez, reoccurring guest. Fan favorite. Fan favorite.

unknown 3:10

That's true.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

You guys are too sweet.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Well, we're really excited because Brooke has overseen the construction of our newest exhibit, our Living Coastline. It's a new touch exhibit, I don't know, California Terrace, near our Seals and Sea Lions. And it took the place of our ray pool. So we'll talk about where the rays went. I know people are very interested in knowing that. But welcome Brooke back to the podcast. Hi, thank you guys so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Okay, first of all, what is our Living Coastline? What is the exhibit? So our Living Coastline is basically a little bit of the old coastal corner, but maxed out. So instead of having like 10 to maybe, you know, 12 feet of touch area, we've actually got over 60 feet of area for guests to touch. It's a completely immersive exhibit and it's a huge upgrade to the area.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah, it's beautiful. The lighting at night is so nice too. Like it's just a gorgeous exhibit.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Oh yeah, it was it was made absolutely spectacular. I mean, we went all out for it. It was definitely something that I think our our facility is gonna benefit from greatly.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yeah. And it's a touch exhibit, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Yes. So it is a an invertebrate touch tank. So we've got everything from our guests, from the stars, sea urchins, cucumbers, you name it. We've got about 40 species and over 900 animals in the exhibit. 40 species in there? There are 40 species in there. And over 900 animals. Really?

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Oh, I didn't even realize it was it's like almost as much as in Tropical Reef, our largest exhibit.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Yes. And counting is also crazy. Yeah. Because it is packed full of animals, but it is so full of life and such a dynamic exhibit that it is cool to see it and also see the sort of silhouette of it. It is a major aesthetics improvement to the ray touch area, no offense to the rays. Time for a time for an upgrade.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Speaking of the rays, before we get into it, where are they? People want to know where the rays went. We don't want people to be panicking. Beautiful bat rays. Some of them are charter animals. They've been here since we opened in 1998.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yes, all of our beautiful rays are doing. Well, I believe they're in Blue Cavern now. They're not on the Blue Cavern habitat now.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

They look very beautiful in there, too. So you can't touch them anymore, but we do have rays you can touch still at Shark Lagoon. And then we have this beautiful new touch habitat too. So do you have still any rays in this exhibit?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Yeah, so we actually do have two little round rays in this exhibit. They're in the sandy pool in the middle. That particular area is no touch. The entire rest of the tank is. But those guys are in there and they're pretty cute. You can see them when they're not burying. Although one of them's got like a favorite spot pressed right up against the window.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

You know what? I just remembered that a guest the other day stopped me and was like, that animal is so cute. What is that? And it was just a little round, right? Pressed up against the acrylic, and he was it they look like they're smiling at all times when you see the bottom of a ray. And they're so little.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

It's really cute. He just got his little butt right up against the acrylic. Like a lot of times. It is their butt. Yeah. And it's like for this field, we have a challenge where we want to make exhibits where the animals want to be in places where guests can see them. And like challenge accepted by him. He sits there all day. He eats tons of food. Like he's a he's a good boy, that one.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

And then I know our sturgeon was a fan favorite. He's behind the scenes right now.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yes. Right? Yeah. Yes, we have him behind the scenes. I'm not sure of what the future plans are for him. Might be another exhibit for us, might be another facility. We'll we'll kind of see. We'll see. We'll keep everybody updated. What species live in our living coastline? So where to begin? For starters, you've got tons of echinoderms. And to kind of help out everybody on the podcast, exactly, that might not be super familiar, echinoderm basically stands for spiny skin. That's gonna be animals that have spiny skin and tube feet. So that's gonna be things like your urchins, your starfish, and even some of your cucumbers as well. In addition to that population, we've also got tons of mollusks, which are basically soft bodied and muscular footed. So that's gonna be things like That's me.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

I was gonna say I have spiky skin sometimes. So we can relate. I have the soft body and muscular feet, so I'll take the next one then.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

But that's gonna be you've got limpids in there, you've got Kelletz Welks in there, and my favorite are gumboot chitins. So those are just a basically a giant sea slug in there that are super cool.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

I love their name. I discovered them the other day. Gumboot Gumboot Kitin. Why are they gum boots?

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Is it the texture of them?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

You know, I have no idea. But they're just like they're super big and they're gorgeous and they move so slow, and they're just there's something about them that even though they don't really have a face, like they're still very lovable. I understand that. Gumboot Kitin. It's my new Halloween costume.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

I love it. I'm a gumboot chitin. Trick-a-treat.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

In addition to a lot of those critters, we've also got tons of crustaceans, so that's going to be your things like your crabs. We've got an extra, extra, extra large lobster in there. Probably the biggest lobster anyone's ever seen. His first name is orange, and his last name is Orange.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Also orange orange. Orange orange. Orange orange. If you see him, he is in the window on sort of the back side of the exhibit, closer to where the shorebird habitat is. And he lives in there and he is absolutely massive. How big is that lobster?

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Huge. I mean, he's he's like the size of a dog. It's really crazy how big this lobster got. He's actually in there. We call it his penthouse. That's really because behavior-wise, he wasn't really fit for society. Some of the fun parts about working in this field is you have to manage a lot of dynamics of different animals. And he was hoarding all of the lobster ladies from all of his friends. So yeah, we went ahead and had to give him his own penthouse suite, as we call it. So no ladies right now. No, no ladies for him to kidnap and hoard.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Orange, orange. What a dog. Orange, orange. Literally, the size of a dog and acts like a dog. So he now lives in OLC in sort of that big window. He literally is the first thing I look for every time I go up to OLC and I.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Look for him now. I didn't even know he had a lobster in there.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

He's huge. He hides really well. I'm actually going to be jumping in there later this week and setting up a cave for him that's more like front and center. So hopefully we can kind of coax him to come out.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Spot to hide. But you should see this lobster. He's impressive. He crawls backwards like up into that little space. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 9:21

Lobsters are so cool.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

I didn't realize we had to manage lobster social dynamics here at the aquarium. Yes, big, big part of my job. That's why they pay me the big buck. Add it to my resume.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Lobster baby management.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Yes. So we have crustaceans, we have gumbuchitans, we have our echinoderms, so the madelins of the world, the spiky skins. And we have mollusks, the meas of the world, softbodied muscular. Strong feet. Very strong feet. So how do these animals all sort of live together? Is it meant to sort of mimic a coastal habitat? Would these animals normally all be found in the same place? Or is this sort of an artificial thing that you'd see at an aquarium? That's exactly what it's supposed to do.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

It's supposed to mimic the natural environment. So the like tidal area is a super dynamic and important part of our ecosystem because you have such a diverse group of animals there. You're going to have everything from snails, worms, urchins, stars, so many different animals all in the same little area. And it's because it's a it's a critical place. Not only do all of the rocks and the structure and the algae act as like a nursery, but they also act as a place that cycles nutrients. So there's just so much that's so important about our inner tidal zone. And it's really nice. It's been really fun working this tank to be able to kind of watch that play out in real time. Like it's very much so what an actual tide pool area looks like. Do you see a lot of animal-animal interactions between the different species? Oh, absolutely. It's constant. I mean, you've they're all sharing the same space, they all climb all over each other, steal food from each other. You know, we're currently having an algae grow in. We believe it to be macrocystis, the giant kelp, all over the exhibit, and the urchins are eating it. So it's like everything's really very natural. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

How cool. I know a question that we get a lot is how we acquire animals. And I think this exhibit in particular is a really, really cool story. Can you talk a little bit about how we acquired the animals in the habitat?

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Oh, absolutely. So for starters, we did a lot of collecting locally. So here at the aquarium, we have our field ops team and we went out to Long Beach Breakwall, and that's where we got a ton of our urchins and cucumbers. In addition, we did different algae collections via tide pooling. In addition, we also had some generous donations. A researcher went ahead and donated over 300 of our hermit crabs in the exhibit, which was awesome. Why did you have so many hermit crabs?

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Thank you for your hermit crabs.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

He was doing a ton of conservation and like research with them. In the past, I don't know about this particular one, but in the past, because I've worked with them when they've done things with GPO, they would ask me to give a sample of water that the GPO had been in, and then they would put it in the water with the hermit crabs, and they would see like what their cortisol levels did and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

I don't know if that was this specific one, but in the past that's what I've seen them do with hermit crabs.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

It's pretty cool, but you never really think about sort of the silliness that goes into some of the research that is done. And having that many hermit crabs is mildly silly, but we appreciate the science shouldn't be silly.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Science is often silly.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

We'll get to at the end kind of some very exciting and very interesting stuff that Brooke is doing that's also a little silly. No super silly. It's very silly. I I love it.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

We'll talk a little bit more about that at the end. I have a question. So when you say that we've gone out collecting to the Long Beach Break Ball, what does that look like? Do you get to participate in actually going out and collecting animals? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

So we uh for starters, we work closely with fish and wildlife. So we have permits, they have certain unallotted numbers of animals we can have, so that's to make sure that we know we we would never, but that us or any other facility aren't going to ever harm the environment or deplete the environment of anything necessary. But yeah, I'm part of our field diving team. A lot of our aquarists are actually a part of our field diving team. So that means I come in early one day and don a wetsuit and go out on a boat and they'd drop us in and we collect, you know, whatever it is we're there to collect that day. Even cooler was actually how we got the majority of our stars and anemones that are out at our living coastline right now. And that's that we actually sent a team up to Washington to collect because the Our Living Coastline exhibit is 52 to 54 degrees roughly. It's supposed to embody the northern Pacific. So a lot of the animals that were are that you see on that exhibit aren't local to here that we could just go out and collect. So we actually sent a team up to Washington for several days in order to collect all these animals because it's not as simple as going out there and you know grabbing animals. We have to do tons of permitting. Washington's been a popular destination for us because we've all been up there, yeah. Washington this year. My goodness. So I was in Washington and Canada for a bit this year. Yeah, I know. I'm getting spoiled by AOP lately to participate with the young of the year rockfish surveys. And for anyone who basically doesn't know, young of the year is meant to describe like animals within their first year of life. So what we did up there was we basically took surveys of various habitats to see how many young of the year or baby rockfish were around. And the reason like that kind of thing matters is because uh rockfish are a great indicator species. They're a great way of knowing how healthy an ecosystem is and like how thriving an environment is. So being able to locate their juveniles and say there's plenty of them or oh, there's not very much of them is like really critical information. And they use that stuff when they determine things to be like marine protected areas and stuff like that. So basically, they want the data to back it up. So we were part of a team that went up there for about a week and dove, I think we dove 10 or 12 sites and took surveys. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

You also vlogged the whole thing. Yes, yes, and it's on our YouTube channel, I'll include it in the show notes with some more information. It's a really great video. You can see, I think you guys just watching you and putting that footage together, hauling the equipment up and down, and you guys are just awesome. So it's a really cool video to see how much work goes into doing these amazing surveys. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah, it was uh they sent us up for the Young of the Year stuff. The collection team got to go in May, I think it was, or March, or somewhere a little bit later when they were a little warmer. They sent us for Young of the Year, right in the middle of like smack dab February. Yeah. And we absolutely froze.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

I was gonna say there's something about the aquarium that loves to put Brooke in charge of the most cold habitats. And maybe it's just because you have such a great attitude about it.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

I think they're testing me. I think they want to see how far they can push me.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

But as you know from Brooke's previous episode of Podcific, Brooke oversees our giant Pacific octopus habitat, which is the coldest exhibit we have at the aquarium. Well, how cold is it? 47 degrees. 47 degrees. Today. Today. And then how cold is our living coastline?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Our living coastline is between 52 and 54.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

So it's pretty chilly. Yeah. And I think it's interesting that we have such a cold touch exhibit because guests are not expecting that. It's really cold. It encourages short, gentle touches and then removing your hands because it's so cold.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Because you physically can't keep your hand in any longer. And why is the water so cold in our living coastline?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

I mean, like I said earlier, these animals are from Washington. I mean, they're collected from Washington. They are northern Pacific animals, so that is just the temperature that they are most comfortable in. Like, could we crank it up a bit for our guests? Sure, but at the end of the day, those animals, that is their environment, that's their home, and we're gonna do what we need to to make them as comfortable as possible.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

We still love our guests, but we love our animals a little more.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Just a little. Just a little. Just by a hair.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

It has been like 95 degrees in Long Beach the last couple weeks. It's been so hot. So how are we keeping our living coastline at 52 when it is outdoors in the sun and it is 90 degrees outside?

SPEAKER_00 16:59

I mean, we have chillers on all things, but our life support team here is phenomenal. They're always on their A game. They they do such a good job with all of our exhibits. So the chillers are definitely, you know, doing the Lord's work up there, but you know, they're they're a huge part of that.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Our life support team, we did interview Reed from Life Support at one point, but they basically run and they run the aquarium, for lack of a better word. Any filtration, any sort of equipment that might be associated with animals and their habitats and their exhibits like temperatures, stability, their flow rate, the filtration, all is sort of managed by our life support department. And so it is really beneficial for us to have an entire department that helps to orchestrate those things and let us know when something is maybe going wrong so that we can address those issues too. And they do a lot of work, especially trying to chill a trying to exhibit in the middle of summer upstairs. But it is pretty cool. When we were setting up, I remember there being a long period of time of sort of flushing the system, getting everything going, and then, you know, the concrete work, I think it takes a really long time for an exhibit to be ready to receive animals. Like we need very stable water parameters, we need to achieve sort of this like perfect stasis of everything is not going to change, the rock work's not gonna leach anything out. And so, what does that process look like from the person setting up an exhibit that large?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Long and difficult. That process is not easy at all. I mean, you're thinking about every single piece of material that you're not only putting in the tank, but that has ever touched the tank or been near the tank has the propensity to possibly leech. In addition, a lot of times I joke with people that I don't actually keep animals, I keep water. Because the happier the water is, the happier the animals are. Exactly. So it's like a lot, there's a whole chemistry for people who maybe aren't, you know, hobbyists that have tanks at home, there's a whole chemistry, a whole biological cycle, basically a balance of good and bad bacteria that you have to maintain in water in order to keep life in it, essentially. And starting that cycle can be incredibly difficult. Especially when it's 52 degrees. Yes. So the colder kind of the water is, the colder things grow, the colder the good and bad bacteria grow. So the longer the cycle takes. So it's crazy. It was definitely a test on all of our patients, uh, trying to get it up to speed because you know you can't add any animals really till you get certain parameters cycled properly.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Animals are always number one.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

Animals are number one. That always has to take precedent over us putting animals in or having a you know a good showing for something. We have to make sure that the animal health and welfare is addressed first and foremost. And so maybe it took a slightly bit longer to get animals into OLC, but that was because we wanted to make sure everything was absolutely safe for those animals.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

100%. And that's one of the reasons why I just love working here because I've seen time and time again that the animal welfare comes first.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

I would love to touch on you guys both oversaw construction now, two years back to back. Oh, similarities between, you know, maintaining the frog gallery and and the construction of it and OLC. Um, you guys can commiserate a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Two years ago, we Two years ago. My goodness. Last year, we renovated our amphibian gallery for the tropical Pacific area. And it looks beautiful, and I love the result of it. But I will say that the process of going through a renovation will test you like nothing else. Because everything you are familiar with and every practice that you have, just as muscle memory of like, I know where this animal lives, I know what's going on, everything is stable, is different. And that in and of itself is very jarring, in addition to the fact that there's construction everywhere, there's jackhammering at no at all times for no reason. I don't know how we could possibly have so many things to jackhammer, but it feels like it's weeks of jackhammering nonstop. And then it's just like random, everything's dusty, everything's a little bit dirty because it's construction. And so there's a lot of people in your space. And at the end of the day, everyone actually worked really, really well together to make the amphibian gallery what it is. And it is so cool to see the result. But those few months of just everything being dust is so challenging. Prior to the animals going on exhibit. Yes, the dusty animals. But animals were all in holding spaces, and we had a really great team that was able to maintain great health and welfare for our animals while they were in the holding spaces. Every animal that went into holding came back out of holding and was able to be exhibited, which is pretty cool to say. But there was a lot going on, and you know, one of the systems that we ordered turned out to be way too small. And I was like, well, our Sonoran Desert Toad is not going to fit into this exhibit. And so there is a little bit of pivoting that has to be done when those little hiccups come up. And I feel like that probably happens every single year for every gallery renovation. And then I got to sit back and watch you guys go through it. Lucky it did feel like a lot, but you tell us how it went.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty much exactly as you describe. In addition to that, like all none of our job, because we work with live animals, it doesn't just stop. So I still have all of my Other exhibits and all of my other animals that need to be cared for, as well as an entire, you know, system we're trying to open. And like Aaron was saying, it's like you're used to things are stable and like easy and you don't have to really think about them. And all of a sudden you're having to think about every choice you make. Like, would this belong here? Does this go here? And it's uh for weeks on end, months on end, really. So, like I said, like kind of was Aaron was saying, how everyone pulled together. That's absolutely it's a great opportunity for a gallery to come together and really help and support one another. During the construction of OLC, right at you know, the ninth hour where it's the most physical and the most things need to be done, I was actually on crutches. Yeah. So I was making it even harder. Yeah. So I was not as helpful as I was hoping to be. And I owe a ton of gratitude to my entire gallery team and even our management team. Everybody really stepped up because, you know, the person who's getting the exhibit is supposed to be doing the most and the most, you know, involved. And I obviously was hobbling around. So incapacitated a little bit. Yes, I'm okay. It was, like I said, a lot of work, very exhausting, but definitely worth it. And it was amazing to see the whole team, managers included, all pull together like that.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

I have a very distinct memory of Brooke, sort of towards the end, and as we were getting ready for the VIP opening, and she was moving animals from holding to the exhibit so that we could be ready for this like big VIP member opening that we were having. And the animals that were most stable and most appropriate to go in at the time were just a bunch of urchins. 500 urchins. Not a bunch. Five hundreds of urchins. And I just remember Brooke sitting on a stool acclimating the urchins, and it was just buckets and buckets and buckets and buckets of urchins and urchins and urchins. And so I got to babysit some urchins for Brooke to take a little break at one point. It was super great. It was fun.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Like I said, I owe so much gratitude. Uh Aaron with the urchin. Sophia at one point brought us all ice cream one summer day while we were working in there. And I'm telling you, man, that push pop was like the difference that saved us. That made the exhibit happen. It literally did.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

We were we were all very pushpops.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

Yeah, pretty much. But it is very gratifying to see the results at the end of it. And maybe do you do you guys want to speak on why we update exhibits at the aquarium? Why not just leave it? For amphibians, a lot of the infrastructure that we had had in place was sort of meant to be temporary. That was always supposed to be a gallery that wasn't permanent. And I don't think that we had had plans to keep a large collection of amphibians for a long time. Mine and a bunch of other people's enthusiasm for the frogs has sort of changed that, and our desire to highlight Mount Yellow Legged Frogs as a conservation project meant that we were likely to be keeping amphibians here for a while. And so, with the idea that we were gonna keep things more permanent, so I really like how it came out, and I think it is beautiful, and it is also slightly more up-to-date information for educational messaging and things like that. So previously those were all water habitats in our frog gallery. Yeah, they were all actually different aquarius systems. I think that the two large systems in the middle used to be coral tanks. And I'm trying to I think we had put Solomon Island Leaf Frogs and Panamanian Golden Frogs in them respectively. And then all of the other systems were either they didn't exist before or they were meant to be an aquatic tan. For Ray Touchpool, why did we want to update the Ray Touchpool area?

SPEAKER_00 25:17

So for a lot of reasons, I think the two main ones was a huge improvement to animal welfare and a huge improvement to guest experience. I think those were the two really driving factors behind. For animal welfare, we want to kind of lead the field when it comes to animal welfare. So while all of our things are great and AZA is cool with them and that's awesome, we want to be even better than that. So we wanted to create an environment where these animals have choice and control. They're able to choose if they want to be near the touch area or choose to retreat as they desire. Additionally, too, there are areas that are non-touch, so we're able to move animals to give them breaks from touch. And we really wanted to just kind of have that be the driving force, the animals. In addition to that, to improve guest experience, we wanted to have a space that was big enough to accommodate everybody. We wanted to have an area that's more open, that our guests can come touch, that you know is better for our educators. They can reach our guests easier, talk to them easier, have better messaging. So it was just overall, really, the the animal welfare and the guest improvement were the huge things that were driving this renovation.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

I think something that I've noticed so much more with the way our Living Coastline is laid out is the guest accessibility is significantly improved, especially compared to Coastal Corner and even to the Ray Touchpool as it was before. And I think what's doubly cool about that is the Rocky Intertidal, especially in Washington where it is freezing cold, is probably not the most accessible habitat for most people to get to. And so it's really cool to have something that is so representative of what that habitat looks like, but to have it be something that guests can get really close to and experience up close and personal rather than being like, hey, I might never have an opportunity to go to Washington and walk down on the tide pools. And even if I did, my toes would freeze. So here, your toes stay warm and you get to be in the California sun. It's it's really cool to see that we are able to bring something that is so inaccessible to most people to our guests here in California.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Oh, absolutely. And that was a huge part of, you know, I was a part of a lot of our discussions when we started kind of talking about this exhibit and planning. And we brought in our staff from other departments as well, our educators, our life support team in order to discuss like how we wanted to go about this. And a big thing for us was accessibility. We want to make sure that all of our guests have access to the animals, that all of our guests can enjoy this experience. Because, like you said, tide pool areas typically aren't ADA compliant. So to be able to provide that opportunity to someone who otherwise might not have it, I think is a really special and unique opportunity. And I'm I'm proud to be part of a company that, you know, really highlighted that and made that so important. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

It's such a big part of our mission. Is and really the goal of the aquarium is to bring you to fall in love with these animals and realize that they have these counterparts in the wild and all these things that you can do to care for their counterparts in the wild. And sea stars specifically have been facing a very difficult time in our oceans. And what better way to educate and fall in love with an animal than it is to literally be able to touch it, feel it, learn about it on the spot. And so that's really the goal with all of our habitats and the goal of this one as well.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Sophia showed me the coolest sea star I've ever seen in my life, and it looks like a pink and blue gummy worm, sort of. And I don't remember what she called it, but is it the Stimson star? Yes, it's the Stimson star. And she pointed it out and she was like, There's only two in here. So if you see it, and if you see a gummy worm-looking sea star. There are more than two.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Don't worry about it. Well, at the time.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Or she lied to me.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

No, no, she probably just didn't know we like I said, I've been I add animals every single week. I have not stopped adding animals since we opened. These are cool. And they do look like the pink and blue gummy worm. Oh, they're beautiful. In addition, an important clarification, because I have heard this a lot from guests, they are not sunflower sea stars. They are sun stars. We do not have sunflower sea stars for our guests to touch. Sunflower sea stars are critically endangered. The ones we have, we have some very young ones that we're rearing behind the scenes, and we're so excited because there's been so much conservation work uh revolving them.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

We take care of all of our animals, but we want to make sure that every animal that is especially important to a species survival effectively, because these guys are some of very few that live under human care and are probably going to be sort of founders for future generations of sea stars. Absolutely. Those guys get VIP treatment.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Yes. But you can see them in our Rocky Reef exhibit. We've got a beautiful display, we've got one on display, and lots of cute lots of content too. Really, really cute. He's a baby, right? Oh, he's tiny.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

So noodles. So cute. Talked a little bit about that with the in our episode with Johanna. Our last episode. If you find one of those gummy worm stars, Aaron will come out and give you a gummy worm. Yeah, I'll appear out of nowhere to give you a gummy there.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

I'm gonna collect all like 20 of them tomorrow. Maybe I actually live in the penthouse with orange orange, and I will come out and give you a gummy worm if you find a stim star. Well, he was also hiding, and so you would think something pink and blue in that exhibit would be very easy to find, but he was under a rock.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Well, it's hard to find anything in that exhibit right now with how much the macroalgae has taken off.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Which is cool. Really cool. Not a direct goal, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:28

But it just happened. Inadvertently grew to macrocystis. So one of the things that cold water aquarus, like if you get really good, you can grow live algae. So it's something we all work really hard to keep live algae, like actually grow it, sustain it, get new growth, things like that. So we work incredibly hard to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

I want to talk about the flow in the exhibit. So there is a tide flood every two minutes in the exhibit. Yes. Why? What is that? What why we do that?

SPEAKER_00 30:57

What is it?

unknown 30:58

What is that?

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Yes. So about every two minutes you'll see waves crashing down from the top and they'll go all throughout the exhibit. And that's because it's meant to replicate the inner tidal. So the inner tidal is basically the barrier between land and sea. It's where you're gonna get that high relief, tons of wave action, and we want to make sure that we emulate these animals' environments. We want to give them what they would be seeing out if they were in the wild in order so that they thrive. So we basically have every two minutes a tidal crashing wave come through and do exactly as it would do out in their environment. And I mean that right there is why you see the taking off of the different algae in there. We haven't planted any algae that we were planning to try to grow right now, and it's just taking off.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

So it's a really cool-looking surge effect when it's so effectively a tank behind the scenes fills up with the water that is then going to be the quote unquote wave that comes crashing down. And I have this very distinct memory of before we had animals in it, but as we were sort of getting the surge just right of the day that it was like we just started it, of our COO, John Rouse, coming up to the entire team who just fed the Seals and Sea Lions and being like, guys, you gotta watch this. And like, walk this over. And it must have just happened because it was two minutes of us staring at he was like, it's coming. And he said, It's coming, it's coming. And I just remember being like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be watching for. Like, I don't know. And then as soon as it starts happening, it is really cool. Like you hear the sound, the waves are crashing down, you get a little splashed because it's it's pretty refreshing to be honest. Especially right now. He it was such a funny two minutes of us being like, What is happening? Just smiling.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

And then we got it at the end of the day. But yeah, it was really cool. It's so funny because when I'm like working on the tank and I want the flow to come, whether it's because I'm feeding or something, it feels like the longest two minutes of my life. But when I'm working on the tank and I need the flow to stop so I can see what I'm doing, it feels like it's just constant. It's like it's it's amazing how two minutes can either be the longest or shortest time of your life. Does that impact how you feed the animals? I try to use it to my advantage, truthfully. So obviously, when it comes to feed, everybody's gonna get like exactly what they need. And for every animal, it's different. So, like, for instance, you've got some of our animals are more eating of like algae or nutritis. That's gonna be things like your cucumbers or your urchins or your chitins, you know, depending on different species, what kind of things they will enjoy. We also go ahead and feed a ton of cut mix. That's gonna be chopping of shrimp, clam, you know, mussels, you name it. And that's gonna be like for our meat eaters, like our stars, and some of our anemones. But in addition to that, we have some anemones that are what are call what are called filter feeders. So they're basically they're like a matritium that require a ton of little, tiny little pieces of food. So for them, I'll go ahead and fill all of the upper pools with things called copepods or like frozen mysids, which are basically just teeny tiny little feeding pieces that you can barely see in the water. And then I'll let that natural tide wave action slowly kind of drip bucket them into the exhibit over the course of the day. That way they're constantly being fed that and they're constantly, you know, because that's gonna be what they would find in their natural environment.

SPEAKER_02 34:11

And I'm sure it's enriching too to just have like these things in the water column exactly the way that they would find it in a tide pool in the ocean, just kind of appearing like, oh, food.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Oh, exactly. It works out really nicely to have such a dynamic exhibit because everybody is enriched by one another and one another's processes. Like I feed a piece of kelp to an urchin, and even though a starfish may not eat that, they still get to interact with it. And same with like the meat that might go to the starfish. The urchins will still grab it and put it on their head. They're like, what is this? Yeah, they wear little little shrimp hats sometimes. And it's like all of the animals end up interacting with each other. I have decorator crabs that sit in the algae and make little hats for themselves, and like everybody interacts a lot, and everybody's feeds end up basically enriching one another, even if the feed isn't meant for them specifically. You can have a shrimp hat. I want a shrimp hat.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

I just think it's fascinating to try and feed 900 different animals at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

I know you can relate to that, Erin, feeding a lot of tadpoles, but that's pretty easy because you just make like an algae plate and you put it down and then they find it. I don't have to spread the algae all over the exhibit and wait for a wave to disperse it to all the tadpoles, but it certainly is challenging, and that's only one species that I take care of at a time. Not six billion species in dogs overseen. Do we know how many how many species exactly are in the system?

SPEAKER_00 35:32

I think it's 37 is what's in our tracks, but I do believe we've added a few more and I haven't updated, which is why I said about 40 species is what I'm estimating. And then in terms of quantity of animals. 900 plus. 900 is like the minimum. I think we're closer to like, I don't want to like say a number that's not real, but I think we're closer to like 1200. My goodness. Do they think do you think that they'll reproduce in that exhibit? Oh, I'm sure they already are. Yeah. I'm happy. Yeah, happy animals like to reproduce. I'm sure they are already trying. The great part is too, but like I said, it's such a dynamic and like it's so accurate to the natural world because like if something lays eggs, another thing will come up and probably eat them, and that's super enriching for both animals to have that experience. So that is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

How many gallons are in the exhibit?

SPEAKER_00 36:20

It is an 8,000-gallon exhibit, roughly.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

And what is your favorite animal that lives in this exhibit? My favorite animal individual and species, in case they're different.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Um I mean, currently my favorite animal is the green urchins because they never have any problems.

SPEAKER_02 36:40

Honestly, I think it's a stable animal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

They're like, we love you, Brooke. We'll never do anything bad. Never pulled out a green urchin for any reason after they put them in and they're in there doing great, and that is why they're united.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Unproblematic teams. Well, and the animals that live in an intertidal area are gonna be slightly hardier animals almost in general, anyway. Absolutely. Because they have to be out of water, in water, splash by water, hit a rock, and everything is.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

It is exactly why they're the perfect animal for a touch exhibit because they are the hardiest of the hardiest. I mean, they are in a tide pool that will just lose water all of a sudden, and they'll sit in that pool and it gets hot or it gets cold, and then the water comes back, and like you said, thrashed against the rocks. Like you've got to be very hardy to make it in the intertidal zone, which is why they make the perfect touch animals for our guests.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Green urchins.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Are they green? Yeah, they're light green. The prettiest urchins we just added this week, actually. I added eight fragile pink urchins, and they're they're like light pink. They're really pretty.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

I'm gonna go up there after this. We're gonna look at pink urchins.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Yeah, they're super pretty. My favorite individual. I love myself a difficult animal. I know you do. I love myself a problem child.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

Brooke diving with a GPO and it unzipping her boot and stealing all her tools.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Cut to orange orange.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Yeah, orange orange.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

I was gonna say probably like individually, I really like orange-orange.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

You're a dog person and he's the size of a dog, so it makes sense. Yeah. You should go see him. I can't believe you haven't seen him yet. I know.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

I should be massive. Well, in fairness, I only see him like once a week. He only comes out when I'm feeding him. So that's fair.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

I told a kid that there was a giant lobster in there once, and he got very excited and then sat there the entire time looking for it and wouldn't leave until we saw it. And I felt really bad for the parents because it was one of those days it was like 95 degrees outside, and the parents were like, Can we go inside? And he was like, There's a huge lobster. I have to see it. And I was like, I don't know if you'll ever be able to see it. So I don't know how long they were there, and if you're listening, I'm really sorry.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

So if you don't see orange-orange on your first trip around the aquarium, head back to our livy co side and look again. Might be there.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Like I said, I'll be diving the exhibit later this week, creating him a cave that's in playing sight and hoping he chooses that instead of his you know, cave he's chosen now. So hopefully by the time this comes out, he'll just be out all the time. Orange-orange exhibit.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

This is the orange or a little thing right next to it. Orange-orange window.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

We literally call it his penthouse. It's pretty nice in there. If I was a lobster, I would live in there. I mean Except not with him.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

It was really a huge blessing because, like I said, a huge part of our job here is managing dynamics of animals. And sometimes you just end up with a problem child. Like you just end up with an animal that cannot be housed with other animals because they're bullies or like you know, they hoard the women's problems. You end up with these challenges and these animals that, you know, you're trying to find a space for where they're not going to hurt anyone, but they still have a good life, then, you know, and proper welfare. So to have that exhibit pop up and have a place that is wonderful for him, a perfect environment for a lobster, while also not putting any other animals in danger or bothering any other animals was such a blessing.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Win-win. A total win. I feel like we need an episode just on the problem, children.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Garibaldi number one.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

I think that the most relatable experience to me is like you will have an animal that you know is sort of an issue, but you're like, maybe it's fine, maybe everything's gonna be okay. And just waking up in the middle of the night worried about a crab or worried about a frog, and I'm like, is he doing okay? I had an experience a couple days ago where I woke up at 2 a.m. worried about one specific frog, and I was awake until I came into work and went and looked at him. Totally fine, doing nothing. And I was like, I have been thinking about you for five hours.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

That's why you guys are the best people to be in your position. You truly care about these animals like you're in like never asleep.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

But thank you for answering all your questions, all our questions.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

I have a question for you, Erin. Alongside our Stars of the Sea rollout, which included this new exhibit, our living coastline, we also updated shorebirds a little bit. Do you want to talk about shorebirds?

SPEAKER_02 40:44

Yeah, so we have a shorebird habitat. The habitat itself got a little bit of a facelift, but honestly, the biggest part and the biggest improvement was that we changed our sort of outward-facing mesh that the animals were previously has behind to this beautiful thick acrylic window. It's so nice.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

It's so gorgeous. So nice.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

We can see the birds really well. We have not had any issues with the birds flying into the window. We have had guests ask about that because it's a lot clearer now, but they do have an understanding and they can see the acrylic, and we have not had issues with that. But our rescued shorebirds live there, and I am finding out every day more and more about the individual shorebirds we have. Our grebe came in to us because he only has one wing and he went through rehab, and they're like, well, he can't fly, because he only has the one. And so grepes are often pretty aquatic animals, and so you will never see a grebe flying around the habitat, but you will see him swimming like a little frog, which is cute. His name is either Rio or Mr. Greb, depending on who you ask. And then Gladys is my favorite animal in the whole exhibit. Yeah, she is our white-faced ibis. She came from International Bird Rescue in San Pedro a couple of years ago, and she is so cute. She's like sort of an iridescent green-brown color with just the slightest bit of white feathers around her beak during breeding season. So visit Gladys, which is also a hilarious name for a bird, and Rio and Mr. Grebe, and come look at our new shorebird habitat. It's pretty cool. Beautiful. Birds love it, and they are already doing all the things that they are supposed to be doing in there.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

So it's cool to see. Amazing. Okay, we have a couple of questions from social media. We got one out of the way immediately, which was where are the bat rays and the sturgeon? Which are currently, like we said, bat rays are in our Honda Blue Cavern habitat. Sturgeon is behind the scenes. Um, another hard-hitting question is how many sea cucumbers do we have in that habitat?

SPEAKER_00 42:28

How much time do you have?

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Let's count. Let's go up there and count.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

I don't know off the top of my head. I know I just added 50 more like two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

So over 50 is how many sea cucumbers. Somebody really likes sea cucumbers.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

I don't know that we had a ton when we opened.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

Do we have different species of sea cucumbers in there?

SPEAKER_00 42:49

We do. We have uh giant red sea cucumbers, which are giant and red. Wow. So they're very easy to distinct.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

So I know it's a mystery.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

And then we have the Warty sea cucumbers, which are they're kind of like a brownish orange and they're a little bit smaller and a little bit. Yes, I have both species in GPO and in Coastal Corner.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Will there be more animals to touch in the future?

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Oh, constantly. Like I said, every single counting. Like I if I went through this journal I have here of all the stuff, every week it's like I added 200 of this, I added another 20 of this, I added another 10 of this. Like every week we're adding animals. We've got a great exhibit now, but we've got a lot we want to do to really take it to that next level.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

And then another great question is if you had to turn into any animal from the new exhibit, which would you turn into?

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Orange orange. I'm thinking about orange orange because he's got like the pet hands unless he's all by himself. But I actually think I might go with like one of the one of the we have some round rays. They're so cute. And like the ability to bury under the sand and have no one seize me sounds really wonderful. The aquarium. The Aquarus group by trade tend to be uh very introverted. You know, we work with animals all day, so we tend to be a little more quiet. So I had to bury under some sand. Bury some sand. That sounds nice.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

Sort of an ongoing joke that the bird, mammal, amphibian team is all extroverts, and all of the Aquarius and invertebrate keepers are introverts. It's fitting. It's honestly not too far. No, it's pretty accurate.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Brooke is also working on outside of OLC, which we keep referring to. Also, there I keep saying things and acronyms. GPO is Giant Pacific Octopus Habitat. OLC is Our Living Coastline, this new exhibit. Yes, sorry, it's hard not to talk in like fields. AOP talk, which is Aquarium of the Pacific. Yes, I see. I kept saying AOP, that's my fault. I think if you listen to this podcast, you probably know at this point AOP is short for Aquarium of the Pacific. And if not, welcome. Welcome. How do we protect our touch exhibits from things that happen overnight? We have herons, we have seagulls. These are potentially prey items for animals like that. How do we protect the animals here on site?

SPEAKER_00 44:57

Yeah, that's definitely a huge thing we have to consider anytime we have outdoor tanks. For us, the our living coastline exhibit is actually tarped off every single night. So when we close, we have massive tarps that go over the entire rock work of the area. And that's in order to have a barrier, because like Madeline was saying, we've got tons of predators out there for those animals. The birds are very smart and very aggressive. Big tarps go on every evening by our uh life support crew. So shout out to them on that. And then in the mornings, I take off those tarps myself with uh some of my volunteers and some of our very willing and lovely staff members who help me.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

So it's like ripping off the blankets in the morning, rise and shine.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Yes, it's a ton of work. I think there's plans in the future to get like an all-encompassing netting so we don't have to tarp things off every night. But for now, the animal welfare and animal safety first. We make sure that they're all tarped up.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

But uh besides everything else you're doing with this new exhibit, what else are you working on behind the scenes? I know you've been doing some stuff with crabs lately.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

That's really exciting. Yes. So I have a bunch of really kind of random niche little projects that float down my way. One of them recently I just got back from presenting about at the regional aquatics workshop, and that was for making prosthetics for crabs. Which is cute. It sounds insane.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

This is a silly thing that I mentioned earlier in the episode, but it's actually not so silly, it's really important.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

Yeah, so crabs, especially in human care, will sometimes get something called shell rot. And it's basically like damage to their exterior skeleton, which is basically their shell. But in human care, where molting is less frequent, that shell rot can get really um degenerative. And there's basically it's a problem industry-wide. So not just here at AOP that we deal with. Our industry as a whole has this challenge where we basically when once a crab gets shell rot, it's degenerative and it's incurable because it'll basically penetrate through their hard exoskeleton into their soft underbody and that tissue till it would basically kill them. So our vet staff, led by Dr. Lance Adams, absolutely genius. I've loved working with him. He's he's so talented. But he basically led the charge that what if we could go in and physically remove the diseased portion of the shell, and then that would basically leave a big hole in our crab shell, which would be bad for their health and also bad for their display appearances for our guests. So I went ahead and created custom castings in order to make custom prosthetics of their shell so that we could basically affix that to their open portion of their shell, and it would work in two parts. It would basically act as an option to protect that soft underbody from potential predators, including their own tank mates, because crabs are monsters. But in addition, it would also, when we use adhesives and epoxies to affix that prosthetic, it could kind of neutralize the oxygen-rich environment that that disease really loves to grow. So we could at least, you know, if we couldn't completely eradicate it, we could at least slow it down. So I've been making prosthetics for crabs for the last couple months.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

And it's really cool to see. We've made a couple, well, we've made one video about it. It's we're due for an update. Yeah. We've got to do an update on that. But it's we'll include that in the show notes, a link to that. And also you can listen to our podcast episode about crabs with Melissa Fisher, one of our aquarists.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

One of the things that was really cool about it is that I know that you had mentioned crabs will kind of pick at each other if anyone has a weird spot on them. And so, in order to not just have it be covered and sort of look like a shell, this is detailed work that Brooke is painting the prosthetics to match the crabs exactly. You would never know that this crab had a prosthetic. Like if I ever need a prosthetic, I want you to do something for me. Because you can't tell that these crabs have had anything going on with them. It is the exact color and like texture and shape and the same amount of spikes as you would expect for that.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

I know Brooke's done a lot of work to because paint changes color when you put it underwater. So something that is one color while you're working on it behind the scenes, and the immediately you put it underwater, it just crabs will know.

SPEAKER_00 49:12

Oh, I can't even tell you that. I thought when I did this, the you know the hard part would be making a custom prosthetic or having it attached to the crab. I was expecting these to be the really big difficult challenges. Getting the color to match. Like I'm an artist outside of here. I know color theory. Like I totally understand that. Getting the color to match Especially underwater is crazy. Like that's so totally different. It was the most frustrating thing I've ever done. Could you just like work on the crab and then put it in the tank? And you know, we're not we're not working on the crabs often. We're trying to do it as sparingly as possible. So we're not bothering them. You know, we're making sure that we're keeping them, you know, happy and healthy and all that. So I only get one shot to match this color maybe every six months. To put a crab in a tank and have that color not match was just I wanted to like scream in my pillow at night.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

That was also keeping me up at night.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

Yeah, that was definitely keeping me up at night. We finally, yeah, finally it took a minute, but we finally figured out the the the trick to it. But and if you're here, you might see a crab that has a custom prosthetic and you wouldn't even know it. What else are you working on? I kind of have like a a I don't I don't want to speak it into existence because I don't want to jinx it, but I have like a little breather between projects. So I'm looking into a lot of 3D modeling for 3D printing. We want to see if we can basically take kind of this crab prosthetic project and utilize the next level of 3D modeling and printing in order to not only improve our animals like health and welfare, but also things like enrichment devices, tools. So I'm currently in the process of teaching myself how to use some of those programs. I am not super tech savvy, so I imagine it will be a long and slow process for me to kind of catch up to speed with that. But we want to see how we can better utilize that in our field here.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

Cool. Brooke is brilliant, so I have no doubt that you're gonna have something really amazing to share with us next time you come on the podcast. You'll have to update us on all the cool stuff you're working on. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much for being here. Oh, yeah, thank you guys for having me. Everyone needs to come check out Brooke's new exhibit, Our Living Coastline.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Aquarium of the Podcific is brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

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SPEAKER_02 51:35

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SPEAKER_01 51:52

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