New employee orientation at Monterey Bay Aquarium

#Monterey #Nature #Marine

Saying hi to Tino the giant pacific octopus (still young)
Employee perk: being able to see the kelp forest with no people around (before we open!

Keep your nudibranchs close and your anemones closer

#Marine #Puns

The northern anchovy ‘yawns’ as it eats because it’s opening its mouth and eating everything
I got to squish a moon jelly

I think I’ll keep updating this thread to share the joy I see whenever I am onsite (which is going to be, often, coz I need this)

I learned that the jellies have circular tanks because.. they get stuck in corners

Top view of an actual shark tank
We don’t have corn holes. We have coral hole
The view on my walk to work when I’m down there

Sticking my phone through the holes of a fence. And finding a (I think) Brandt’s cormorant colony

#Birding

Kind of unfair that a random photo out of the railings has birds and otters in it
I get to sea the open sea exhibit before we open! A sure way to know we haven’t opened is there are bubbles in the water

The Monterey bay aquarium stands on the grounds of a former sardine cannery. Due to overfishing, the sardine population collapsed. When I heard about this I thought of the Silicon Valley office parks 50 miles north, engaged in modern extractive exploitation without ever giving back.

The recovery of the bay, the work of the aquarium and the marine national park status has completely changed the environment

Attending a staff-only internal guitar concert in the open sea exhibit this morning

You can watch some live cams here (of the animals, not the concert)

https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/live-cams

Meeting in the kelp forest (we are closed today for a staff only event)
There really was a guitar concert in front of the sea nettles this morning
An exhibit that shows what a ‘whale fall’ looks like
Slow shutter speed / low light photo of a lump fish

Move over, JK ‘TERFY’ Rowling.

Here’s ’Hairy Otter’, written by (probably) JK Owl

My friends are asking if I’m involved in any of the fun social media and I’m like nope but I love that team and I’m trying to meet all of them

(Monterey Bay is the GOAT: Greatest Ocean of all Time)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCZ-RrjIwQy/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Monterey Bay Aquarium on Instagram: "Feeling super amped up that we got Executive Director, Julie Packard, and Chief Conservation and Science Officer, Margaret Spring joining the trend to tell you all about the based things at our Aquarium. They truly were the moment💅✨🌊 #MontereyBayAquarium #TheyDeliveredLikeAQueen #GenZWroteTheScriptMillennialsGoogledTheTerms"

7,381 likes, 111 comments - montereybayaquarium on November 15, 2024: "Feeling super amped up that we got Executive Director, Julie Packard, and Chief Conservation and Science Officer, Margaret Spring joining the trend to tell you all about the based things at our Aquarium. They truly were the moment💅✨🌊 #MontereyBayAquarium #TheyDeliveredLikeAQueen #GenZWroteTheScriptMillennialsGoogledTheTerms".

Instagram

The otter people didn’t let me take my phone to the behind the scenes otter feeding, but promised to send me photos after so

#Marine #Mammals #Otters #OttersOfMastodon #OttersOfTheFediverse

I have an octopus scarf!

At work they got us to head out to connect with the ocean. Honestly can’t believe I get to be here

Also not lost on me that this very beach was yet another Chinese settlement that was destroyed by ‘fire’ in 1906

Someone made a whale
I made a dumpling
View from a room where I’m having a 3 day training program
View from my last day of training
Someone just told me ‘California sheephead transition from female to male, AND conjure a sphere of mucus to protect them when they sleep’
Maybe it shows I spend a lot of time looking at jellyfish but I got in this morning and was like NEW JELLY
Pacific sardines
Adrianna Tan (@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)

Attached: 2 images It’s hard to leave work sometimes! #Photography #Monterey #California

Hachyderm.io

I went for a walk at lunch

#Monterey #MontereyBayAquarium #Kelp

I met some of my coworkers
I love going to see the jellies
@skinnylatte I used to go to the aquarium a lot when I was little and this is the room that has left the biggest impression on me by far, I still remember what the fonts on the walls look like
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Meeting in the kelp forest (we are closed today for a staff only event)
There really was a guitar concert in front of the sea nettles this morning
An exhibit that shows what a ‘whale fall’ looks like
Slow shutter speed / low light photo of a lump fish

Move over, JK ‘TERFY’ Rowling.

Here’s ’Hairy Otter’, written by (probably) JK Owl

My friends are asking if I’m involved in any of the fun social media and I’m like nope but I love that team and I’m trying to meet all of them

(Monterey Bay is the GOAT: Greatest Ocean of all Time)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCZ-RrjIwQy/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Monterey Bay Aquarium on Instagram: "Feeling super amped up that we got Executive Director, Julie Packard, and Chief Conservation and Science Officer, Margaret Spring joining the trend to tell you all about the based things at our Aquarium. They truly were the moment💅✨🌊 #MontereyBayAquarium #TheyDeliveredLikeAQueen #GenZWroteTheScriptMillennialsGoogledTheTerms"

7,381 likes, 111 comments - montereybayaquarium on November 15, 2024: "Feeling super amped up that we got Executive Director, Julie Packard, and Chief Conservation and Science Officer, Margaret Spring joining the trend to tell you all about the based things at our Aquarium. They truly were the moment💅✨🌊 #MontereyBayAquarium #TheyDeliveredLikeAQueen #GenZWroteTheScriptMillennialsGoogledTheTerms".

Instagram

The otter people didn’t let me take my phone to the behind the scenes otter feeding, but promised to send me photos after so

#Marine #Mammals #Otters #OttersOfMastodon #OttersOfTheFediverse

I have an octopus scarf!

At work they got us to head out to connect with the ocean. Honestly can’t believe I get to be here

Also not lost on me that this very beach was yet another Chinese settlement that was destroyed by ‘fire’ in 1906

Someone made a whale
I made a dumpling
View from a room where I’m having a 3 day training program
View from my last day of training
Someone just told me ‘California sheephead transition from female to male, AND conjure a sphere of mucus to protect them when they sleep’
Maybe it shows I spend a lot of time looking at jellyfish but I got in this morning and was like NEW JELLY
@skinnylatte are you training to be a fish?
@skinnylatte I love how the remnants of the canning industry that nearly destroyed the Bay have now become residences for wildlife.
@skinnylatte love that the alt text specifically mentions the species. Sign of working with people deeply concerned about non human species?
@ab haha i was into birds before marine mammals
@skinnylatte wow! This job seems to be an ever better match than it already felt ❤️
You're really making many of us jealous
@skinnylatte Looks like the cormorants are having a meeting of their own. “I called this meeting to talk about the fish.”
@skinnylatte @petes_bread_eqn_xls I wonder what those birds were thinking?
@skinnylatte That is amazing! I am jealous. Again.

@skinnylatte

A lovely scarf it is! My wife and I are enamored with cephalopods.

@skinnylatte omg I'm jealous that's awesome
@skinnylatte @TerryHancock Very nice, and the octopi look quite realistic.
@skinnylatte I was deciding whether to follow and you got me at Octopus scarf 🐙💖
@skinnylatte ack, jealous! Great scarf!
@skinnylatte Cuteness overload welcomed!

@skinnylatte

That's indisputably true! It is, in fact, the greatest ocean of all time!

@skinnylatte (since at least 300 million years, more or less, close enough)

@skinnylatte hahaha that gift shop is out of control. The big otter was really rotting and falling apart for a few years but I think they either repaired it or replaced it because it doesn't look as ratty now.

The Ed Ricketts lab next door is worth a visit when they open it for tours once a month.

@douglasvb haha yes it
Is so kitschy

I plan to check out Ed Rickett’s house soon

@skinnylatte Shouldn't that be J. K. "Superb" Owl ?

@skinnylatte I'm gonna have to ask you to stop posting these, because I've never been there and can't really afford to take a trip to CA right now!

(Don't actually, please.)

@skinnylatte you really have the absolutely greatest place of work.
@tante I can’t believe it happened and that I get to experience all of this joy
@skinnylatte IÄm very happy for you
@skinnylatte Ah, so great! Had missed you're there now. Been going off and on since the 1980s (my folks live quite nearby). Hope it's been a good settling in to the new work.
@skinnylatte I don’t suppose the aquarium needs an RF/DSP engineer? 🙃
@emily I think there is a team that has this role. Let me see if I can find out anything

@skinnylatte really? I was being silly! It seems so out of the realm of what I’d expect at an aquarium. I design and program custom radio systems from the circuit board up. Though I guess I would only be maybe 60% surprised if an organization with such specialized needs might have such a role.

I was reading some of your posts from this thread to my wife last night and she was especially excited about the whale watching :)

@emily they have some pretty hardcore systems engineering teams here. They have to do the stuff like how to pump and filter millions of gallons of water and send it back. How to build the gear that needs to go into the research ships. If you look at MBARI’s (our sister org) career page I wouldn’t be surprised if they have stuff like that. They send ships out, do black water diving, send out ROVs to the deep sea

https://www.mbari.org/person/yanwu-zhang/

Yanwu Zhang • MBARI

Education and Work Experience Yanwu Zhang received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and the M.S. degree in Underwater Acoustics Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnic University, Xi’an, China, in 1989 and 1991, respectively. In 1998, he received the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the M.S. degree in …

MBARI
@skinnylatte interesting! I don’t have much experience with mechanical or industrial systems, but I’ve been working for quite a long time with FPGAs, embedded software, and math in general. I’ll have to check that out, thanks!
@emily yeah MBARI is an incredible org. The aquarium is interesting coz it’s both aquarium and conservation / research. MBARI is a sister org that collaborates with us (and shares similar roots) but they def do more stuff closer to what you describe
@skinnylatte I have some truly spectacular photos from in there. my favorite location, inside my favorite place.