This is Carolina, one of our loggerhead sea turtles. She was named for the many loggerhead nesting beaches in the Carolinas.

This is Retread, another loggerhead sea turtle. Retread came to us through our rescue and rehab department. When found, she was so lethargic due to a condition known as cold stunned, that she was thought to be dead. Luckily one of the biologists noticed a faint flipper movement and she was saved. According to Mirriam-Webster, the word "retread" means to press back into service or to make over as if new.

This is Scute, our Kemp's ridley sea turtle. She was named for the individual plates on a sea turtle's shell, which are called scutes.

The video below shows our three sand tiger sharks, Judith, Markham and Galilee. Judith (Point Judith) and Galilee are named after harbor communities in Rhode Island where sand tiger sharks can be found. Markham is named after the Markham 75FSW, a sunken ship that is part of North Carolina's artificial reef program. Sand tiger sharks are commonly seen in the area. The first shark in the frame is Judith, then Markham and finally Galilee.

The next video shows our Southern stingrays, Daisy and Ripley. Daisy got her name from the scientific word for southern stingray, Dasyatis americana. Ripley was named after the institution she came from; Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies. The first ray is Daisy, the second is Ripley.

And last but certainly not least, Myrtle will always be Myrtle.

Let's take a look at Sarah as she so nicely models the gear a typical SCUBA diver wears...



That's a lot of stuff just to go swimming! But it's all necessary, and to be honest, once you're in the water you forget you're even wearing it. (Remember the whole weightless thing?) So let's break it down and shed all the mystery. Besides, Sarah's getting hot and tired wearing all that equipment!

Since a picture's worth a thousand words, let's start with some images ...



Mask: You have to wear a mask to see underwater because your eyes can't focus directly in water, they need an air space to look through. Plus a SCUBA mask covers your nose to prevent that pesky water up the nose thing.


Buoyancy Compensator (or 'BC'): This is the harness that connects the diver to that precious tank of air. But it plays another, equaly important role. It contains a bladder, sort of like a balloon, that the diver can add or remove air from. The more air in the bladder, the more the diver floats up; remove air and the diver sinks. Just the right amount of air and the diver can hover motionless. Pretty cool!

BC Inflator Hose: This is the thing that allows the diver to add / remove air from the BC. There's a pair of buttons on this hose, one to inflate the BC and one to deflate it. There's also a mouthpiece that allows the diver to manually inflate the BC by exhaling into it in the event of a malfunction.

Weightbelt: What? You mean you actually have to strap lead weights to your body to become weightless? Ironic, isn't it. Well, alot of this gear actually wants to float (including most of us humans) and on top of that, SCUBA divers often have to wear some form of thermal protection to keep them from getting cold underwater (Sarah is wearing a full wetsuit that is 7mm thick, which is just about as thick a wetsuit as they come). This thermal protection tends to be very buoyant. So to offset all this "floatyness" a diver needs to strap on some extra weight. Of course, there needs to be some way of ditching this weight during an emergency. The weightbelt has a "quick release" buckle, allowing the diver to ditch the weight with one hand. Kind of like a hot air balloonist dropping sandbags to float back up. This analogy works espically well with Sarah, because I often say she's full of hot air.

Tank: That cylindrical thing strapped to a diver's back is what holds the air the diver needs to breathe. In order to hold as much as possible in as small a tank as possible, the air is really crammed into the tank under high pressure when it's filled. As a matter of fact, that tank on Sarah's back holds enough air to fill an entire telephone booth, or about 80 cubic feet. (Humm --when was the last time you saw one of those?)

Regulator: This is the thing that provides the diver with the air from the tank on her back, and while doing so it has to convert the high pressure air from the tank into something more lung-friendly. It's made up of several components - the most important being "first stage", which attaches directly to the tank and knocks the high pressure in the tank down to an intermediate pressure; and the "second stage", which delivers a smooth breath of air everytime the diver inhales (and provides an exit path for the spent air when the divers exhales). There is also a gauge that tells the diver how much air is left in the tank - a pretty good thing to know! - and a backup second stage, often referred to as the "octopus". Finally there's a hose that connects to the inflator hose of the BC, to the tank, and by now you know what that's for...

Fins: When you aren't able to stand, it's kind of hard to walk, isn't it! How do most fish deal with this problem? Yep - they have fins. So it makes sense to give fins to humans when they want to explore a fish's home. Check out how easy it is to move in "underspace" when you're wearing fins...

Then we geared up and entered the water while our Co-Op student, Stephany, took photos to document the process. Here's John waiting for a cownose ray to swim by:

Of course, when working with wild animals, we always expect the unexpeted. This time the "unexpected" was Bob, one of our six foot long green moray eels:



Bob was pretty hungry. He would not leave me alone so I had to feed him before attempting to catch the cownose rays again:



After Bob was fed, John and I caught one cownose ray at a time and lifted it up onto the dive platform:



Keiko, one of our vet staff, and I clipped the spine (which doesn't hurt they ray, it's similiar to when we clip our fingernails) while one of our volunteers, Brian, held the ray's pectoral fins:

We also took measurements of each ray so we could track its growth over time. Another of our volunteers, Sam, assisted by recording each ray's total length and disc width. After only a few minutes of of the water, each ray was returned safely to the exhibit:



- Sarah