Wednesday, June 17, 2009

#129: Harbor Seal Puzzle

Amelia has always shown a lot of interest in a particular orange boomer ball toy that we stuff with fish. Now we have decided to take it one step further by making a puzzle for her. So she can learn how it works we started with an easy one.



We modified two clear, small animal exercise balls by drilling holes in them, then placed some capelin pieces in the big ball and gave it to the seals. Since it looked a little different from the original toy, it took Amelia a little bit to figure out what it was, but once she did she was really into it. And she wasn't the only one; Trumpet, Chuck, Cayenne, and Smoke all took turns. Now the next step is to start placing the fish inside the little ball and put that inside the big ball- then they will really have to move the toy to get the fish out.




-Erin

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posted by Erin at 9:00 AM 0 Comments



Tuesday, June 16, 2009

#128: Smoke Rorschach Test

The harbor seals are approaching the molting season when they will all get new coats of hair. At this time of year, many of the seals start to get a small accumulation of algae growing on their old coats. Our oldest seal Smoke tends to move a little slower than the other seals that live at the Aquarium, and it seems like algae tends to stick to her a bit more ... especially on her head.


To me the algae on her head looks like a bird. What do you think it looks like?



In July Smoke will molt and look good as new. Click here to see what Smoke looked like last year mid-molt. Here's what she looked like when she finished her molt last August. What a difference!


-Justin

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posted by Justin at 3:20 PM 0 Comments



Monday, June 15, 2009

#127: What's Black and Grey and Read All Over?

Photo: Nicolaus Czarnecki/METRO

Smoke made the paper the other day! Her picture was featured in Boston's Metro newspaper in an article discussing affordable family outings. Click here for the article. What the Metro forgot to mention is that the Aquarium's harbor seal exhibit is FREE to the public. Talk about a bargain! Stop by the next time you're in the downtown area.

-Justin

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posted by Justin at 10:00 AM 0 Comments



Monday, June 1, 2009

#118: Lana Paints a Birthday Card for Smoke



We celebrated Smoke's 38th birthday in style at the Aquarium. Lana even painted her a card. Check out the video!



Click here to see how we celebrated Smoke's birthday last year (hint: it involves fish and candles).
Happy birthday Smokey!

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posted by Justin at 12:00 PM 1 Comments



Friday, May 22, 2009

#115: I Want to be Like Smoke

In an earlier post, I tried napping like Smoke. Lately, I've noticed Smoke seems very comfortable laying out at the surface of the water for Belinda, so I thought I would give it a shot. Pretty comfortable!



-Erin

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posted by Erin at 9:45 AM 1 Comments



Thursday, May 14, 2009

#112: The Queen's Wave


After Smoke and I mastered her invertedbottle, I had to find a new behavior to train. It turned out that she was the only harbor seal at the Aquarium that didn't know how to wave. Not anymore! To get her waving I first had to get her to lift and lower her flipper. Over time we worked on increasing the number of waves and the speed of them. Here's the video:



Notice that I started off by rolling her over onto her side before she started waving. Soon, the act of rolling over became her cue to wave which was not my desired signal. Right now I'm working on getting her to wave by just saying the word "wave". Watch this video to see some of the steps we took to get Smokey waving like the queen she is.


-Justin

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posted by Justin at 9:25 AM 1 Comments



Friday, April 3, 2009

#102: Who's Who?

One of the most popular questions the trainers hear is "How do you tell the harbor seals apart?" The answer sounds simple; just by looking at them, but it can take a long time if you don't see the seals every day.

First you need to know who is in the exhibit. We currently have seven Atlantic harbor seals in the plaza exhibit--two males and five females. We can divide them into two easily identifiable groups, the 'spotted' and the 'non-spotted' seals. The spotted seals have distinct dark spots on their necks and bellies. All of the 'spotted' seals are related.

Our spotted seals are Trumpet Cayenne & Chacoda:

Link

The non-spotted family: Amelia, Reggae, and Smoke:

Look at the picture below of the non-spotted family. Can you tell who is who? How did you tell?



Last but not least, our seventh seal is Lana. She is not related to any of the other seals, but she most resembles the non-spotted family.



Other than the obvious spot patterns, we look for differences in the shape of the head, nose, and eyes. They also differ in their body length and girth, but this can be deceiving. The seals' weight can fluctuate between 10 and 30 pounds depending on the time of year, so weight isn't a reliable way to distinguish individuals.

Now that you've looked at the pictures, will you be able to tell the seals apart on your next trip to the Aquarium? Don't worry if you can't. Start by telling the spotted from the non-spotted first. It took all of us a while to figure out Who's Who too and we see them every day!

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posted by Rochelle at 6:00 AM 1 Comments



Sunday, March 15, 2009

#100: Reset Your Sights

Hello, my name is Belinda and I would like to share my training experiences with some animals I've had the pleasure of working with. These animals are very interesting because they don't necessarily use their eyes.




Smoke is our 37-year-old Atlantic Harbor seal, which makes her one of the oldest seals in an aquarium. (Here's how we celebrated her birthday last year). She has had cataracts in both eyes for many years and is blind with the exception of seeing an occasional shadow. Some older seals, like other older animals and people, can develop cataracts. When an animal is blind, it is easy to assume that they cannot be trained. However, this is not the case. Smoke can be trained to do virtually anything a sighted seal can. However, there are some differences in HOW she is trained.



Smoke, being a seal, has sensitive whiskers. The technical term is called "vibrissae" because they are sensitive enough to pick up subtle changes in vibrations in her surroundings. This is great news for training. Using a hand target, I can guide Smoke's head and body into different positions. Here is a video of several behaviors all being asked for by very subtle changes in my hand position to her whiskers. Metaphorically speaking, communicating with touch could be compared to using braille vs. sign language.

Lana is another older seal with cataracts. Like Smoke, we utilize her whiskers as much as possible in the training process. Many of the seals have been trained to retrieve a seal toy from the water. Obviously, this can become a difficult task if you can't see. With Lana, I retrained her fetch behavior basing it on her sense of hearing and touch vs. sight. I attached a long, blue strap to Lana's retrieval toy. Initially, Lana hears the toy splash into the water and swims toward that general direction. Once she touches the strip with her whiskers she can follow it all the way to the toy and bring it back.




I have recently begun working with another interesting character. It's an African Lungfish that lives behind the scenes here at the New England Aquarium. The first thing I wanted to teach him was to target. In this case, I wanted to reinforce him for touching a particular bead. However, it became clear to me quickly that this fish does not have good eyesight.

I decided to take a similar route as I did with training Smoke and Lana; refusing to base the training on his sight, and instead using vibrations in the water to guide him. An African lungfish has several sensors on its face and a lateral line system down its body that, like whiskers on a seal, can detect subtle changes. This is a picture of the Lungfish targeting (at left) and a video of him responding to vibrations to be guided into a tube (below).



Last autumn, it was a wonderful experience when residents from the New England Homes for the Deaf came to visit. The residents, who happened to be blind and deaf, met Smoke. The interaction between both Smoke and the residents was completely based on touch. Smoke used her whiskers to touch their hands and the residents were able to feel her whiskers and face. Communication through touch alone seemed to be more than enough for each resident to crack a huge smile.


Working with these animals has taught me how significant touch is for communication. Adapting to different training techniques has helped broaden my experience and look at training situations from several angles. I am grateful to have the opportunity to work with these animals. They have taught me more than I could ever teach them.





- Belinda

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posted by Belinda at 7:53 AM 2 Comments



Thursday, January 8, 2009

#81: Just Another Day at the Office

Rochelle and I were the only two trainers on last week. With seven seals to feed you might think it would be difficult, but this is where those name targets come in handy. Each of us did two sessions with five seals at a time, which allowed the other trainer to focus on two. It was enriching for both us and the seals; you will notice that Rochelle and I didn't always feed the same animals or even line them up in the same order, but by using those name targets we were able to keep the five seals together calmly and give everyone the attention they deserved.


Here is Rochelle with (starting from the top) Trumpet, Lana, Smoke, Reggae, and Amelia.
Can you find all five targets?


In this picture I am working with (from the top) Cayenne, Chuck, Smoke, Reggae, and Lana. With the other four seals focusing on their name targets I am able to give Smoke some of her daily eye drops.

I wonder what today will bring?

-Erin

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posted by Erin at 12:00 PM 0 Comments



Tuesday, January 6, 2009

#80: New Year's Resolution


Now that 2009 is here, many of us are hoping to keep our New Year's resolutions. One popular resolution is to be healthier, either by quitting a bad habit or trying to eat better. The New Balance Foundation Marine Mammal Center is scheduled to open this year so fitness is on the minds of many Aquarium staff. The animal training staff is no exception and we vowed to be more active in 2009. If we just did some of the behaviors that the seals do everyday, we would be making a good start. So here are a few examples of some seal behaviors that we thought we would try.

Smoke's inverted bottling behavior looks very similar to Justin's headstand...




... and when Rochelle sits down to give Amelia the signal, they can do sit-ups together!



Of course, there's nothing like dancing to get everyone moving!

So what do you like to do to stay active? Be sure to check back to see what new activities we are trying out and how the new exhibit is coming along.
Happy New Year!

-Erin

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posted by Erin at 6:00 AM 3 Comments



Tuesday, November 25, 2008

#69: My First Behavior

Smokey

As a new trainer, it is a big deal when you finally get to teach an animal something new. I am teaching my first behavior to Smoke, our oldest harbor seal. Smoke can often be found in a resting position called bottling in which she floats with her head above the water (much like a bottle would float). My challenge has been to teach her to go upside-down and stick her hind flippers out of the water, which we call... are you ready? An inverted bottle.

When training a new behavior there are a number of steps you take to reach the finished product. We call these steps approximations. Training a new behavior is like climbing a ladder. You have to climb one rung at a time to reach your goal. Each rung is like an approximation. In this video you can see some of the approximations that I've taken.



At first I got Smoke to follow a target, in this case a white bead on the end of a pole, until she was upside-down. After removing the target from the scenario I worked on getting her to maintain a vertical body position with her flippers sticking out of the water. She was still relying on me to guide her and help her balance. Now with a soft tap on her chin she goes down on her own and balances in the position. Watch this video to see some of the steps I took in training my first behavior!

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posted by NEAQ at 10:30 AM 1 Comments



Sunday, October 19, 2008

#60: Nap Time!



While I was in the harbor seal exhibit the other day, I decided to try out the bottling behavior that Smoke seems to enjoy so much. It was so relaxing I could've taken a nap myself!

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posted by Erin at 2:27 PM 4 Comments



Wednesday, October 15, 2008

#57: Free Swimming with the Seals Update

We have had the opportunity to do a number of free swims with the harbor seals now, so I wanted to show you some of the interactions we have had.




Smoke showed interest even before I got in the water, then came by for a quick touch. Rochelle and Amelia played with the orange boomer ball, Lana checked out her favorite toy then Smoke came over for a good scratch from Justin. Cayenne, who has been a little shy about the free swim idea, swam close to take a closer look at Lindsay. We all agree that these free swims are not only enriching for the seals, but for the trainers as well!


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posted by NEAQ at 4:43 PM 3 Comments



Tuesday, August 12, 2008

#34: Molting Update

The molting season is in full swing for the harbor seals. Here are some photos from the past few days of Smoke, our oldest harbor seal.





The brown areas are patches of old hair, the silver is all new stuff.


-Justin

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posted by Justin at 11:12 AM 1 Comments



Friday, June 27, 2008

#22: Fish Prep

A few weeks ago, you got a taste (so to speak) of the diets that we feed our seals at the Aquarium. But how do we prepare it all and how do we figure out how much food each animal needs? Here's how, young grasshoppers.

Each morning we arrive early, prepared to get down and dirty in sinks full of frozen fish and squid. All of the fish needs to be thawed in cold water. In the summertime it feels good being up to your elbows in frigid fishy water, in the winter you're lucky if you can feel your hands. After everything is thawed, each individual fish and squid gets inspected to insure the highest quality. If there are any cuts, scrapes, exploded eyeballs or other damages, it is considered no good and is not fed to the seals. Only the best for our animals!



Once the fish is thawed we weigh buckets of fish for the seals' training sessions. We have our seafood analyzed and know how many calories are in each pound of the 3 different options (herring, capelin and squid). Our seals typically eat between 2,000 and 6,000 calories per day depending on the animal and the season.



Seals can have food preferences just like people. For example, our oldest seal Smoke enjoys squid, while her son Reggae is not a fan. There are many factors that we take into account when calculating how much food an animal needs. We look at their weight, how much they ate in past years, and how eager they are to participate in training sessions.



It can be difficult to figure out the perfect amounts. There are no points to count, or Valerie Bertinelli to deliver pre-made meals. We don't want them to be too hungry, or on the flip side, too full that they would rather use their food as a toy than eat it.

By the end of our morning fish prep, we are well on our way to smelling like a fish and the animals are getting excited about their first training sessions. Bon appetit!

-Justin

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posted by NEAQ at 2:46 PM 2 Comments



Sunday, June 8, 2008

#17: Smoke's 37th Birthday

The paparazzi was in full force at the harbor seal exhibit the other day when we celebrated Smoke's 37th birthday. Smoke is one of the oldest harbor seals in the country. Atlantic harbor seals typically live into their mid twenties, so 37 is quite a feat!


Smokey is not one for chocolate, so instead we made her a big fish "cake" with herring, capelin and some monster-sized squid. We put candles in the cake and Lana, Smoke's long-time buddy, helped blow them out.


Smoke did really well with all of the photographers and camera men surrounding her. With all of the cameras clicking away, you would've thought you were on a red carpet somewhere! Smoke certainly deserves all the attention.

You can view a video of the happy day here.

-Justin

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posted by Justin at 10:33 AM 2 Comments