Seward SeaLife Center

I took advantage of 10 years worth of volunteering at the zoo to request a favor from Shannon Jenson, the Curator of The Alaska Zoo, last week.

Dr. Reading was in town to give his lecture for our Tuesday Night at the Zoo program and wanted to go to Seward while he was here, so I asked Shannon to arrange for some of the scientists at the Seward SeaLife Center to meet with us and show us around.

I am so glad I did – we had a great time!

At their suggestion, I booked us for their regular behind-the-scenes tour, available to anybody who pays the extra $20 per person. This is a very informative tour which takes you back behind the exhibits (as the name suggests!) and explains the science and technologies being used.

You really get a sense of just how impressive it is over there when you stand next to the huge filtration systems, seawater intake valves, and quarantine tanks back there! We even got to go back to the scientists’ offices to watch them as they do a video-survey of the sea lions on Chiswell Island where they keep track of the babies who had just been thermally marked (which basically means branded).

After the tour we were met by Nicole Brandt, the head of the “bird people” who take care of the puffin exhibit. I love that exhibit – it’s one of my favorites there at the center.

Several of the birds have nested and laid eggs this year, so – in order to ensure that all the eggs have a chance at hatching, they have taken the eggs away from the nests (leaving fake ones in their places so the female birds will continue to lay on them) and placed them in incubators. Once the eggs begin to hatch – which could happen any day now – they will put them back under their respective moms so that they will have a normal birth and the females will take care of them just like nothing ever happened.

They have nesting boxes scattered throughout the exhibit, hidden amongst the nooks and crannies in the rocks. The back of the boxes are easily accessibly to the scientists, so they can monitor the nestlings health and make sure everything is going according to plan. Nicole showed us several of them, but not the occupied ones! Don’t want to disturb anything…

The best part of all, however, was when she took us into the exhibit! We got to walk around in there, with all the birds coming to check us out. They are just adorable things, and quite habituated to humans so they’d come right up to us – and peck at us, too! I wanted to pick up this one horned puffin – he was too cute, and really looked like he wanted to jump up into my lap.

After spending about half an hour with all the birds, we finally let Nicole get back to work and met up with the supervisor of the mammal department, whose name I am afraid I have forgotten. She was just as nice as Nicole, however, and took us back to the holding pens to talk about all the research going on with mammals.

Sugar, one of the female Stellar’s sea lions, was hanging out with her. What a beautiful animal she is! And quite verbal, too – which means she did a lot of “burping” at us while we were there. Her handler said that what she really wanted was a treat, so was ready, willing, and able to do anything that might be requested of her in order to get one!

Their male Stellar’s sea lion, Woody, is in full rut-mode this season – so we were not able to meet with him. The sealife center has moved to a no-contact method of working with him due to the fact that he weighs well over 2,000 pounds and could inflict some serious damage if he felt like it. He is a character at the best of times, but when you add in all the raging hormones the rut brings on – he’s best left alone.

All in all, this was a great SeaLife experience – for both of us!