Diving into Conservation

By Mariya Greeley

Erin Turowski, of Salem, MA, spends her work days as a veterinarian caring for cats and dogs in the Boston area, but on Fridays, you can find her volunteering at the New England Aquarium among the Giant Ocean Tank’s inhabitants.

When Turowski started donating her time to the Aquarium as an assistant dive volunteer in November 2019, she prepared food for the Giant Ocean Tank animals, including green and loggerhead sea turtles, cownose rays, and hundreds of colorful reef fish, and helped with maintenance tasks outside the exhibit.

Over the next four years, she got her scuba certification and completed the Aquarium’s open-water dive requirements and in-house tests to become a volunteer diver. She now scuba dives in the Giant Ocean Tank every Friday to help maintain a clean, healthy habitat. She scrubs the coral rockwork with a small brush, vacuums the bottom of the habitat to make sure no animal waste or old food accumulates in any nooks or crannies, and helps wipe down the clear, four-story walls of the 200,000-gallon exhibit.

This volunteer work not only aligns with Turowski’s passion for animal care but also her values as a coastal community member. She has seen the impact of sea level rise and climate change on her and her neighbors’ lives, as local flooding becomes more common. She wants to make an impact, and spending time at the Aquarium has only strengthened that resolve.

“[Volunteering at the Aquarium has] trained me to be more of a steward for the environment in my everyday life. I’m really sensitive to plastics on the ground and things that can impact our wildlife populations, and I’m an avid advocate for sustainable and efficient transportation,” she says. “It’s really brought marine life and the marine environment into a central position in my whole life.”

Spending time at the Aquarium is also simply a bright spot in her busy schedule! Turowski particularly enjoys helping care for the sea turtles, as they are an endangered species. And she notes her experience with the Aquarium’s staff and animals has been continually intellectually stimulating.

“There’s always something to learn. There’s such a variety of species and organisms in the exhibit…there are just so many different idiosyncrasies with all the animals,” she says. “As long as there’s more to learn, I will be happy to come back and learn it, and that, I think, is going to go on for a long time.”

This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of blue member magazine.