Carli Tirone: Marine Science Center on Tybee Island Georgia, week one

Hello everyone! I’m Carli Tirone from Olathe which is the corn capital of Colorado!! I love snorkeling so much that I brought my mask and snorkel to my Pintern interview.  Living in Colorado isn’t the ideal state to go out and snorkel. I have been interning at the  Tybee Island Marine Science Center in Georgia. For the next three weeks I will be experiencing what it’s like to be a marine biologist.

My work days

Monday

On my first day I had the chance to be able to work at the new science center. The first thing I helped with was cleaning the bathrooms which was very humbling. For the rest of the day I assisted with the summer sea camp for children 6-12 yrs. The group to which I was assigned had a presentation about dolphins and whales. The presentation talked about the types of classifications based on characteristics into which dolphins and whales fit. I learned that whales that have teeth are called odontocetes. Other whales, like blues whales, have no teeth but baleen. Baleen is what catches krill and other organisms like small shrimp. It is basically the mustache of the whale. After the presentation the camp counselors and I took the little kids over to the beach. There we saw a cannonball jelly fish. Its stings are extremely faint so touching it would be harmless. This type of jellyfish is known to commonly wash up on the beach. Because they contain so much water, jellyfish die quite fast after they wash up on a beach.  In addition to this we picked him up and put the cannonball jelly in the ocean. After a while  we all went up to the science center and cleaned up. Everyone was of course practicing pandemic protocol which caused me to get a COVID-19 test. My host family was known for being in heath care so I knew that they would help get me tested.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday

  For the rest of the week I was fortunate enough to be able to intern at the old marine science center, which holds all the animals until the new science center on the north end is finished. Here I meal prepped, fed all the animals, and cleaned tanks. Meal prepping would have definitely grossed out most. We peeled and deheaded shrimp to make a shrimp purée for the little fish. For the bigger animals we made a gel for them to eat. This contained kale, carrots, squid, and cod. Chantel, the lady I worked with, took me to the marsh on Friday and we caught fiddler crabs, mussels, and grass shrimp. She also showed me how to use a cast net to catch blue crabs.

Tuesday

This was the day I got tested for COVID. Since my host mom’s daughter works in health care she took me there. After getting my test, which was a blood draw (I’m very scared of needles) we went to downtown Savannah. While driving, my host mom showed me all the historical sites and talked about how one year a lady drove into the statue shown below. Coming from Colorado it’s very humid. With it being so humid it feels like the heat is ten times worse. I was very grateful to have a tour of Savannah with my host mom from the comforts of her air-conditioned car.