Navy Interns Do SeaWorld!

Every year the Navy internship director Erika arranges for the interns to take a behind-the-scenes tour of SeaWorld, and for the past few months we have all been dying to go! Finally last week, Erika announced that we'd be going today!!! Since I had the day off, I met up with everyone at SeaWorld, and we got to go in through the employee entrance! Our first stop was backstage at Wild Arctic, which is home to polar bears, walruses and beluga whales! Of course, I am an idiot, and even though I charged my camera yesterday, I forgot it and left it plugged into the wall! Gah! Luckily, the iPhone 4 has a pretty decent camera, so all hope was not lost! We started in the back holding areas for the polar bears, where the trainers demonstrated some of the behaviors and feeding! Since polar bears are a large predator, the trainers only have protected contact with them, which means that they are always behind some sort of barrier, just for safety.
We then headed round the corner to the walrus backstage area! Apparently, this one in particular likes to blow snot on people! hahaha

Our last stop in the Wild Arctic was the beluga whale exhibit! Unfortunately, we did not get to go backstage in this area, but we did get to see several belugas in their pool, including a baby beluga!!! (Of course I had to start singing "Baby Beluga" much to everyone's chagrin. hahaha) :)

After the Wild Arctic, we headed on over to the Clyde and Seamore sea lion show! It wasn't quite time for a show to start, but we watched a training session and an educational show for school groups! We also got to talk to one of the pinniped trainers who answered all of our questions!

Our next stop was the sea otter exhibit, where we went backstage and saw their holding tank. There were three female sea otters, and one of them was just 5 months old and so cute!!!

After the sea lions we had a short break before the dolphin show started, so we all grabbed a snack and I got an awesome Shamu cup!!!! (Just don't ask me how much it cost!)

We then watched the dolphin show Blue Horizons, and it was the first time I had seen it. I have heard mixed reviews on the show, and I found it to be rather cheesy, but entertaining none the less! However, there was a period of several minutes where it was just acrobats and no dolphins!!! The people don't come to SeaWorld to see acrobats, they come for dolphins! :) In addition to the many dolphins, there are also 2 pilot whales in the show! After the show ended, the assistant curator of the whale and dolphin show came down to talk to us, and it was very cool to talk to someone who had been in the training field for so long and was so high up on the SeaWorld ladder!

After the whale and dolphin show we made our way to the Pets Rule show! We got there a bit late and didn't have the greatest seats, so I did not take any pictures during the show. After the show I went up to the stage to pet some of the dogs and one of the pigs! The assistant manager came down to talk to our group and she gave us a backstage tour of the Pets Rule area where they house all the dogs, cats, birds, pigs, etc. I even got to pet a kangaroo! :)

We then had to high-tail it to the Shamu show, and ended up sitting in some of the very back rows because we got there so late! But it was still a pretty good view. I've seen this show Believe a few times, and they are actually going to be debuting a new show One Ocean in about a month! Even though I've seen it so many times, I always end up taking a bunch of pictures!

After the show, one of Erika's good friends, who is the Supervisor of Training for the Shamu show came down to talk to our group! It was very helpful to hear advice on how to get into this field from someone who basically has the "ideal" marine mammal job. (I mean, doesn't everyone want to be a killer whale trainer at some point in their life?!) Also, it was very cool to hang around the stadium after the show because they were working on training sessions with the killer whales so we got to see a lot of behaviors being practiced! We even got a private splashing session with one of the orcas! :)

We got some pretty cool group photos too, and once I get copies of them I will add some more pictures to my blog!!! Anyways, it was a pretty awesome day, and maybe I will end up working there some day!!! :)