Back to the Mote Marine Journal 6 Feb 17, 2011

Back to the Mote Marine

Wednesday Feb 16. 2011, my journal entry brought me back to the Mote Marine Aquarium. But this time I wasn’t there to look at fish (at least not in the beginning of my trip); I went inside their laboratory building. This was a building I never noticed nor went into before, mostly because I knew that the building was probably off limits. Seeing that it says it’s a laboratory building, my guess is that is where they care for some of the fish that they have rescued from the ocean, and maybe some other projects to help the Mote Marine. It was fun going inside the laboratory building. It felt like I was getting the backstage pass to see how things work and what goes on behind the building showing off the fish (that would be the main stage.)

What brought me to the laboratory building was for another assignment, my Ecology of Sarasota class, and my teacher that works there told me to come by and she showed my their library of books, magazines and lots of other resources on fish and the area. It was their own library of scientific information. That was something I would never guess would be at the Mote Marine. But I was glad to see that I could get scientific research for my lionfish. I thought that the place that the marine workers did their lab work and research was in another building not so close to where families are coming to see the main building with the fish. But I see why they would have to have their labs and their resources close by. If an animal needs help (some kind of emergency) or if a fish, then the labs and their library might have stung one have the workers would be very useful. What I also found in their library that caught my attention was a table filled with old papers and documents, they were yellow/cream color paper and some of the print was small. They were re-prints of articles and documents. I thought it was cool that they are finding old papers and re-printing them. Their library was well organized with everything from fish, location and anything marine life and ocean related. I knew that for my final project on the Lionfish, I need to go to a place that had lots of books on fish, and the Mote library was the perfect spot to go.

After rooming around in the library, looking at all their books and magazines. I almost got the chance to see where they kept the baby seahorses. They breed the seahorses there. But unfortunately, the guy that works in that part of the lab wasn’t there, so I couldn’t go in. But I did see through the door a tank with what looked like baby seahorses or some other baby fish.  It was fun going behind the scenes seeing what the people do at the Mote when they are not giving a tour or talking to some families about a certain fish. Also that because my teacher works at the Mote, she let me in to see the fish in the aquarium for free (I was wearing the visitor sticker, that I got at the front desk of the Laboratory entrance), and it was a perfect sunny day to be outside and see the fish again.