Typical Day
Marina Traynor wakes up at 6:00AM on the dot. She's always loved sunrises, so Marina watches the sunlight flood the sky from her apartment window while she eats her breakfast: egg and avocado on chili-cheese toast. The balance of proteins, carbs, and healthy fats keeps her going strong through the morning.
Marina is at the park—the Dolphin Discovery Mystical Water Kingdom Park, that is—by 7:00AM. The first water show isn't until 10:30AM, but there's a lot of prep work to get done in the hours until then. First, Marina has to prep the fish. Ahh, the fish.
Marina sighs. On average, a dolphin eats between ten and twenty-five kilograms of fish per day. Dolphin Discover Mystical Water Kingdom has eight dolphins. That's a lot of fish to be washed, cut, partitioned, and fed to the dolphins.
By 8:45AM Marina, reeking of fish, administers some of the specially formulated vitamins to the two dolphins she's in charge of for the day. Then she goes to meet the rest of the team for their pre-show meeting.
Marina is new to the team, having graduated college only three years ago. Since she had grown up on a horse ranch, Marina was familiar with caring for large animals. She hadn't really considered making a career of it until she took an animal behavior class to fulfill her psychology major. Reading about the internal and external stimuli that affect animal behavior, Marina was captivated.
Her interest in the subject only deepened when she read about the different schools of thoughts on training. Should we use positive, reward-based training? Or discipline-based training? Marina remembered her years spent training Cargo, her favorite horse. It became clear she had found her calling.
"Marina!"
Oops. They're calling her.
"Marina! It's go time!"
Marina zips up the back to her wetsuit. The temperature in the water is around fifty-five degrees. It's not ice, but not exactly pleasant either.
Marina and two of the other trainers take their positions for the start of the show. The audience claps. Marina, in the center, throws her hands up, brings them down sharply, and a dolphin appears. The audience claps and cheers louder.
An hour later, Marina is congratulating the dolphins: Skip, Zooey, and Emily. Sometimes it's hard for Marina to remember that they're not a part of her family, too. Every year she sends Christmas cards signed, "Marina, Jake"— her longtime animal behaviorist boyfriend—"Skip, Zooey, and Emily."
After the show, a veterinary staff member checks the respiration rates of the dolphins and takes blood samples. Meanwhile, Marina and the others run physical checkups on the dolphins. They take special care to check the eyes, mouths, and blowholes for any injuries.
By 11:30AM it's time for an early lunch (for both the dolphins and their trainers). For the dolphins, it's more fish. For the trainers, it's anything but fish. Marina had to stop eating fish altogether when she took the job. Even the smell causes her to lose her appetite these days. Instead, she has a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with an apple and yogurt.
There's a second afternoon show at 1:30PM, giving the trainers an hour to work a little with the dolphins on some new moves.
While the trainers work with the dolphins on new "tricks," the kind that the public sees, they also need to teach dolphins what they call "husbandry" behaviors: presentations for blood samples, testing animal's mouths, skin, and so on.
At 1:30PM, Marina is standing in front of an audience again, this time she has a break from being the ringleader. Another trainer raises her hand...brings it down again...and the show begins. Shortly after 2:00PM Marina is seated in her wetsuit taking questions from the audience. After each performance at least one trainer needs to be available to answer questions. For Marina, it's close to the worst part of the job. But it's important enough that she had to pass not only a swimming test, but a "mic test" when she was hired.
After a snack for herself and the dolphins (always the dolphins), Marina finally relaxes. It's time for "waterwork," as the trainers call it. Basically, free play sessions for the trainers and the dolphins. These are team-bonding activities, involving balls, barrels, cones, ice, and whatever else seems fun to the involved parties.
After the final 4:00PM showing (the same thing, as always), it's time to clean out the dolphins' "habitats," as they call them. Yep. It's time to don the scuba equipment and wade through the gross muck on the bottom of the floors of their living spaces. Not fun or glamorous.
By 6:00PM Marina's been at Dolphin Discovery Mystical Water Kingdom for far too long. She's physically exhausted, and ready for a nice, warm dinner (she bought a new pesto sauce last week at the grocery store that she's been meaning to try out) and a really long bath at home. But, sighing to herself, Marina remembers that she has yet to log the day's activities.
Before she leaves, she records the number of free play sessions and presentations for her assigned dolphins, how much food each dolphin consumed (in tens of kilos, each), and updates the health records with that day's stats. By 6:45PM Marina is finally headed home.