Animal Care Staff All Stars

Did you know that nearly 80 Animal Care team members at the New England Aquarium are responsible for caring for nearly 10,000 animals? In celebration of Zookeeper Appreciation Week, we want to highlight the work of our Animal Care staff.

The highly trained team tackles a number of tasks to keep the animals strong and healthy, from feeding them, to cleaning and prepping exhibits and engaging them through enrichment activities. Here, Animal Care Coordinator Andrea Newman talks more about their work.

We Care

The Animal Care team takes care of many things. To start, it’s important to know the basic baseline for your animals. So, what’s normal and healthy for a particular animal is determined by spending time with them and getting to know them. That way, you get to know how they look physically, but also, you learn more about their behaviors. The more time you are spending observing, the more likely you are to notice if something is amiss.

There’s also a lot of cleaning that goes into taking care of the animals, whether it’s their exhibit space, the habitats, and the water.  Also, when you feed the animals, you must clean the prep areas before and after use.

At our Animal Care Center in Quincy, there’s a lot of great work happening there. In addition to our sea turtle hospital, there’s a quarantine area for animals before moving to exhibits at the Aquarium, coral work (growing coral) and larval work (the sustainable raising and rearing of fish) too.

We Organize

Record-keeping is also part of the work. It’s important to record the feedings (how much animals eat, when and what they eat,) cleaning schedules and enrichment activities. We collect a lot of data.

In addition to all those tasks, everyone has their own area of expertise. There’s a volunteer coordinator who handles all the volunteers and interns. They are so important to the work that we do. Staff take time out of their day to interview new recruits and train them, which is not necessarily animal-centered work, but it’s the management of people that needs to happen whether it’s volunteers, interns, or other co-workers.

We Build

We build things too. If there’s a habitat or space that needs tending to, there will always be someone to help. We work to find innovative solutions for creating a new enrichment item for an animal, or sometimes the Animal Care team might help build an addition to an exhibit or create a new habitat or screen. There’s a construction aspect of things. When we build something, we have to think of it through the lens of the animal. Is it safe for them? Is it durable? Can it handle salt water? You have to make sure that it’s safe for the exhibit and the animals. There are a lot of people and advisory groups that work together to ensure the safety of the exhibits and the health of the animals in our care. Everyone works together within the organization to help with directives. Our most important priority is to make sure the animals are safe and thriving.