Starting a new thread to document the delightful things I am finding out about joining the tech team at Monterey Bay Aquarium.
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46. I’ve been fascinated by ‘whale fall’ since I first learned about it here.
Here’s an incredible video of a whale fall exploration dive in the deep sea just off Monterey Bay.
What is a whale fall?
The oceans' depths are supplied by nutrients falling down from the surface waters. When whales die and sink, the whale carcasses, or whale falls, provide a sudden, concentrated food source and a bonanza for organisms in the deep sea. Different stages in the decomposition of the whale carcass support a succession of marine biological communities. Scavengers consume the soft tissue in a matter of months. Organic fragments, or detritus, enrich the sediments nearby for over a year. Importantly, the skeleton supports rich communities for years to decades, both as a hard substrate, or the base, for invertebrate colonization and as a source of sulfides from the decay of organic compounds of whalebones. Microbes live off of the energy released from these chemical reactions, particularly and form the basis of ecosystems for as long as the food source lasts. At deep sea levels this forms a new food web and provides energy to support single- and multi-cell organisms and sponges, thus adding to the oceans food chain.
(oceanservice.noaa.gov)
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Adrianna Tanreplied to your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦 last edited by
@blogdiva @funnymonkey heheh
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47. I talked to real people about animal poop 5 different times today (I counted). Different animals too
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48. I found the internal form for ‘booking an animal encounter’. My coworker said ‘usually it’s for team building or bringing your family on behind the scenes visits BUT if you want to hang out with the octopus or otters on your lunch break by yourself, I don’t see why not?’
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49. She then said when she went to hang out with the octopus she got octopus hickies all over her arms and they didn’t go away for a long time.
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@skinnylatte It’s so much fun reading your posts about how much fun you are having in your new job!
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@econoprof thank you! It’s giving me life and joy
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan last edited by [email protected]
50. Today I got stopped in the hallways. Someone I didn’t really know said, ‘hey are you the one who posted the pic of the Townsend’s warbler? I saw the same bird but didn’t have my camera so thanks for taking the cool pic’ (when I worked at a database company, all they talked about was emacs vs vim)
We then agreed to go on a lunch bird walk
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Granny Art (Shrimp) (Joni)replied to Adrianna Tan last edited by
@skinnylatte Ok, this sounds like a dream job. I am so happy for you!! (Also, do I get to call you a friend, or are you just "someone I know on the internet"?)
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Granny Art (Shrimp) (Joni) last edited by
@artcollisions friend! Also happy to do a online video or audio chat if you’re ever up for that!
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51. Apparently they will pay for us to get Spanish lessons, so my taco dreams are going to be bumped up to the next level. Did I also mention I met a guy who has a database of 90 taco truck rankings in Monterey, Salinas, Watsonville, all the way up to Santa Cruz
I’m emailing him to have lunch (at a taco truck)
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52. People were asking me if I got a bluetiful sweatshirt and I thought they were all mispronouncing beautiful, but there really is an employee sweatshirt called BLUEtiful. It’s blue.
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@skinnylatte You have the best job in the world.
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@noondlyt it really feels like it!
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53. My manager showed me a special spot in a building facing the ocean that he called the ‘binoculars corner’. There are comfy chairs and binoculars you can use.
I zipped down my jacket and showed that I already had a pair of binoculars. He said ‘oh yours are better’
Then I told him about how I went to someone’s office just before that and she had a SCOPE SET UP FOR WHALES (that anyone visiting her could use)
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@skinnylatte Ooh, what kind do you have? I need to buy some.
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@skry Nikon prostaff P3
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@skinnylatte this one made me feel so many feelings. I like tech and have fun with it and all but omg I crave being around people with more interesting interests so bad.
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@zkat I feel like I need a balance that I found increasingly harder to find in more conventional tech. Just avoiding assholes felt like a job
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@skinnylatte all your coworkers sound like such joyful, delightful people living their best fishy lives
