Yesterday I was telling you about all of the wildlife that I’ve seen during my vacation in Aruba. While there have many interesting fish, birds, and reptiles near the beach, I haven’t seen any marine mammals. Luckily, I have a few more days to watch for dolphins and whales since United canceled my flight and might have left me “stuck” here until Wednesday, but I doubt I’ll see any because they’re not very common here. Marine mammals are far more common in places like California’s Bay Area. That is why The Marine Mammal Center is located in Sausalito, CA. They are a non-profit “veterinary research hospital and educational center dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of ill and injured marine mammals – primarily elephant seals, harbor seals, and California sea lions.” They’ve been at in for nearly 40 years and have rescued or treated close to 20,000 animals.
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I’m in St. Louis for the weekend, mostly to watch my girlfriend’s little sister’s volleyball tournament, but I’m looking for other cool things to do since it’s my first time here. Yesterday I got to visit the Saint Louis Zoo, which is fantastic. (And I promise I didn’t act like this kid.) I got to see monkeys, giraffes, zebras, lions, penguins, gorillas, elephants, somali wild asses, and a whole range of other animals that I’d never even heard of before. I even got to see the mountain nyala that makes an appearance in the zoo’s logo. I was really impressed with the Saint Louis Zoo—it has a wonderful layout and an amazing collection of animals. The best part, though, was that we got to see feeding time for the grizzly bears. It may sound barbaric, but it was nothing of the sort. We watched as two of the laziest bears that I’ve ever seen would catch oranges in their mouths and then suck out the meat while leaving behind the rind. What made the experience even better was that it was free. Saint Louis Zoo is a “free zoo,” so all you have to pay for is parking.
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When I’m doing my daily research and looking for interesting jobs or internships, I often find postings on third party job boards. I’m not a big fan of job boards, so I try to go directly to the employer’s site to get information on the opportunities. Today I was Googling an internship, and the first result was completely unrelated. Luckily, it was a way more interesting internship with Underwater Adventures Aquarium at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. It’s the world’s largest underground aquarium, and it’s just the kind of place that you might end up at during a summer vacation road trip. They say it’s like scuba diving without getting wet. There are 1.2 million gallons of water, and there’s a “300 foot-long curved tunnel, complete with a moving walkway that simulates a scuba diving adventure.” Underwater Adventures has sharks, octopuses, jellyfish, and all kinds of fish, and you can watch them all get fed. They even offer birthday parties where you can sleep with the sharks.
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I’m up in Michigan for my annual Father’s Day fly fishing trip. The town that I stay in is called Grayling, which is named after a fish. Unfortunately, it’s a fish that I’ll never catch here, because it’s extinct—at least the Michigan population is. Back in the 1800s the entire state of Michigan was logged, and apparently the value of the wood harvested from Michigan during the Gold Rush was $1 billion greater than the gold found in California during the same time. That had some serious environmental consequences, and one of those was the extinction of the Michigan Grayling. The introduction of trout to many of Michigan’s rivers didn’t help either, as they outcompeted the grayling for food. Luckily, we still have populations of grayling in Montana, Alaska, and much of Canada. They’re not completely lost, but there are plenty of species that we’ll never get to see. ARKive is changing it. Not only are they fighting to prevent many species from going extinct, but they’re also documenting the world’s most endangered species so even if they are extirpated, they’ll never be completely lost. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, a UK based organization with an American arm located in Washington, DC.
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I’m a nut about wildlife. I don’t watch Animal Planet all day or anything, but I get ridiculously excited when I see a new species in the wild. My hope is to one day run into a mountain lion in the wild, at least as long as I’m not being hunted. As fanatical as I am about wildlife, I bet I don’t even come close to the people at the Wildlife Conservation Society, a New York City based non-profit. They were founded in 1895 with a “clear mission to save wildlife and wild places across the globe.” Their first major success was aiding the recovery of American Bison, and now they’re working to “protect many of the world’s iconic creatures here and abroad, including gorillas in the Congo, tigers in India, polar bears in the Arctic, and ocean giants in our world’s amazing seascapes.” Beyond doing that, they also run 5 parks in New York City—the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Central Park Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo and Queens Zoo.
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My parents are in town for the weekend, and I’ve been thinking of fun things to do with them around Chicago. One place that came to mind is Shedd Aquarium. I don’t think that we’ll end up getting a chance to make it there this weekend, but it was certainly a good thought. And once I thought about it, I realized that they’re probably have internships. Shedd Aquarium is much like other aquariums now, but it really stood out when it was opened in the 1930s. The aquarium was founded by John G. Shedd, retired president of Marshall Field & Company, and financed by him with $3 million in gifts. The goal was to bring Chicago up to par with other “cosmopolitan” cities that had aquariums, and by the end of the project Chicago’s aquarium “housed the greatest variety of sea life under one roof.” It also happened to be “the first inland aquarium with a permanent saltwater collection,” which meant that they had to ship millions of gallons of seawater from Florida on trains to provide a proper habitat for the sea life.
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I’ve already recounted my whale watch story in our post on internships at the Whale Center of New England, but I will say again that I think whales are absolutely amazing creatures. To see them in the wild is an experience that I think everyone should be able to have. And one of the reasons that we continue to be able to see whales in the wild is Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.They’re based in Plymouth, MA, and they are “the global voice for the protection of whales, dolphins, and their environment.” Their internship coordinator e-mailed me to tell me about the organization and its internships, and because they sound so great, I’m sharing them with you. I also figured that if you were anything like the kids I grew up with, a good number of you wanted to be Marine Biologists at some point. For those of you who still have a strong interest in Marine Biology, Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society offers amazing opportunities year round.
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Although I got to work at a private fishing club during one summer in college and spent two summers interning at Orvis, I still wish that I could have done something like interning with Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks. Being a lover of the outdoors, I can’t imagine many things better than spending a summer in Big Sky Country. In case you’re not familiar with what Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is, they’re Montana’s state agency charged with managing conservation of many of the state’s natural resources. Obviously, much of what they do is centered around managing fishing and hunting regulations, but they also have a huge responsibility of managing all of state parks (and there’s a whole lot to manage in a state like Montana).
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My first day of orientation at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations included a great story from David Price, one of CBS’s Early Show hosts and formerly the Fox 5 Weather Guy. He told us about how he spent 4 years living with an animal. The animal was his Freshman year roommate (whom he decided to continue living with for the next 3 years for some crazy reason). The best story about David Price’s roommate was when he ordered a sheet (sicilian) pizza after a long night of drinking. He ate about half of the pizza, but then realized that he was becoming very tired. Before he passed out, he decided to staple the remaining pieces of the pizza to the wall next to his bed. That way as he drifted in and out of sleep, he could enjoy his pizza by only slightly moving his neck to reach the pizza that was stapled to the wall. David Price is second only to Jane Goodall when it comes to living amongst animals. In case you aren’t familiar with Dr. Dame Jane Goodall, you should know that she spent a good part of her life living among chimpanzees to study their social and family interactions. She also founded the The Jane Goodall Institute, which offers some interesting internship opportunities.
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When I was 6th grade, my entire Middle School class (all 51 of us) went on a whale watch trip. It was supposed to be a good way for the class to bond, but it ended up creating more cliquiness. The Cape Cod weather in September was delightful, but the seas were apparently a little too rough for whale watching. We spent a lot of time buying taffy and other novelties instead. On the last day we were able to get out for half a day of whale watching. The seas were still rough, so the teachers encouraged all of us to take half a tablet of dramamine. Being the manly 6th grade man that I was, I decided that I would take a full tablet. For some of my classmates the half tablet wasn’t enough, and they spent most of the boat ride with their heads over the railing technicolor yawning. I, on the other hand, fell right to sleep – a side effect of the dramamine. I woke up just long enough to see the 2 whales that we encountered, and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of my nap. Those were the first whales that I’d ever seen, but I’ve seen some since, and I’m always absolutely amazed by them. If you’re fascinated by whales (and not susceptible to seasickness), an internship with The Whale Center of New England might be a great way to spend this fall or spring.
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If you haven’t read our article The Couch Potato’s Guide to Job Search, you should. We got the idea for it when we wrote about entry-level jobs at the American Association of Zoos & Aquariums. The short of it is that we saw that GEICO commercial (yes, we’ve featured GEICO’s entry-level jobs too) where the gecko is at the aquarium talking about the American Association of Zoos & Aquariums, and it got us thinking about finding jobs or internships while watching tv. We decided that watching tv is a legitimate job search method and that your mom can no longer yell at you for being lazy and not having a job when you’re parked in front of the tube. Anyway, we thought it was time to covers internships with the American Association of Zoos & Aquariums, so here we go.
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