in Baltimore to learn about the job of a Dive Safety Officer. Welcome to Jonathan Birds Blue World! Its November, and Cameraman Bill and I
are on a road trip, driving from New England down to Baltimore Maryland. Cameraman Bills driving! Baltimore might not be the first place you
would expect an episode of Blue World, but were here to meet an old friend at the
National Aquarium in the heart of the waterfront district. We pull up bright and early and head over
to the entrance.
The waterfall is an impressive first sight
inside the foyer, with its pool filled with salmon. The glass walls of this impressive facility
afford a gorgeous view of the city and harbor. The National Aquarium has a number of large
marine exhibits, like the Blacktip Reef Exhibit, looking like a coral lagoon underneath the
skeleton of a finback whale. Shark Alley contains several species of sharks
and sawfish! And there is a fantastic touch tank area where
guests can touch skates, horseshow crabs and even jellyfish.
Public relations manager Lauren Hartman is
taking me down to the diving area to find Holly. Holly! So good to see you! Welcome to the National Aquarium! Thank you. You are just in time for our dive briefing. Oh awesome, lets go.
Holly and I have been friends for more than
20 years, and she is the Dive Safety Officer here at the National Aquarium. So a lot of these are just trending ones. Zeke the Zebra shark is still in Q pool, okay. Hes off exhibit for time out.
Lady ray Today, Holly is giving the morning dive briefing
to the volunteer divers who will be cleaning the exhibits and feeding the fish. Her tail is healing actually really nicely,
we got a look at it the other day, okay? The Crooked jaw hogfish As the DSO (Dive Safety Officer) for the aquarium,
Holly has a lot of responsibility. So Holly, tell me about your job. What does a DSO do at an aquarium? Okay, so the general theme is: manage dive
safety operations for all--whether its on-site like aquarium exhibit diving, or off-site
which we consider field diving.
So, its safety, equipment, and training. Its putting on the manager hat. Here we interface with the husbandry team,
as far as how they work with our volunteer divers, because the volunteer divers help
feed and clean the exhibit. Probably our biggest customer is husbandry
but we work with media relations folks.
Well work with philanthropy for VIP dives. We have a guest immersion program that we
share with an outside dive shop, which works really well for us here. So youre a manager, youre a trainer,
youre a dive buddy. But ultimately, DSODive Safety Officerhow
many divers are you managing the safety of here? Over 200.
Over 150 volunteer divers, soon to grow next
year with additional recruits. We have probably one of the larger volunteer
diver groups in the country for aquariums. Great, awesome. Well lets go diving! Lets go! Its always a little bit weird, but really
exciting, to be putting your gear together in a hallway.
Im not out on a boat, Im in a building! Cameraman Bill and I will be joining Holly
on a dive in the Atlantic Coral Reef exhibit, as she does her daily inspection. This exhibit is a ring-shaped tank containing
over 1,000 fish. So where were going to enter today, is
this platform. The exhibit is 13 feet deep.
It always to me seems a lot deeper because
when you walk it, you have several layers. Thus spirals down to the Shark Alley Exhibit
and then it spirals down to underwater viewing for Blacktip Reef. Its a really cool system, its sort of
stacked. We suit up on the dive platform.
Next we drop into the warm 75 water. Talk about convenient diving! As I descend, the early morning vacuuming
team is just finishing up, pulling their hoses out of the water. Holly will lead me and Bill around the exhibit. The entire inner wall of the exhibit is glass.
The fish can see out just as well as the people
can see in. A Bonnethead shark catches my eye. This little guy is like a mini-hammerhead. A bit shy around our lights, but still curious.
On the gravel bottom, a stingray, and flying
overhead, a cow-nosed ray. These animals are fed every day by divers,
so they are not shy at all. A pair of porcupine fish are a type of puffer. They can inflate to the size of a basketball
if threatened, but they rarely need to do that in here.
Some of the fish are so friendly that they
come too close, blocking your view. This Hogfish wants some camera time, until
he is cut off by a Queen Angelfish! As Holly makes her way around the giant ring-shaped
tank, I follow behind, amazed by the size of it. With 335,000 gallons, this exhibit has as
much water as about 25 swimming pools! Holly is looking in every crack and hole,
because she is trying to find one of the moray eels which has been hiding for a few days. The two morays, known as Oscar and Felix are
known to vanish for days at a time.
The reef structure in the exhibit, while its
not living coral, provides the same kind of habitat for the fish that a living reef would. And as well, it has interesting features for
divers including a great swim-through, which makes it feel like an underwater playground. As we near the end of the dive, Felix is nowhere
to be found, but the tarpon wants some camera time. Soon our inspection is over and we have to
leave the best dive in Baltimoreclear and warm with no current.
Getting to dive here great fun. And I learned that you can start out as a
volunteer, and maybe if you stick with it long enough, work your way up to DSO..
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