I guess the easiest thing to do is just tell you here about the program instead of one at a time.
The aquarium has about 60 paid staff and some 600 volunteers in various capacities. Roughly 200 of those are volunteer divers. To get into the program it goes something like this:
1) Apply 2) Written exam 3) In-water skills evaluation 4) Interview 5) Selection 6) Day assignment
The whole process honestly takes about 4 months not including the day assignment which might be a year or more to actually get assigned a dive day. Many of the volunteer divers have been diving for a long time, and personally I am on year 8. We are all very dedicated to the animals we care for and the educational and conservational issues the aquarium brings forward.
We mainly support four exhibits at the aquarium: Wings in the Water, Atlantic Coral Reef, Open Ocean, and the Marine Mammal Pavilion.
Winds in the Water: more than 50 different animals including southern stingrays, cownose rays, roughtail stingrays, bullnose stingrays, one green sea turtle, one zebra shark, one bonnethead shark and one blacknose shark.
Atlantic Coral Reef: Artificial coral but real fish and juvenile stingrays. Fish include queen anglefish, grey anglefish, spanish grunts, grasbys, nassau grouper, red hinds, spanish hogfish, grunts, jacks, yellowtail snapper, blue tangs, highhats, triggerfish, etc, etc
Open Ocean: Sand Tiger Sharks, Nurse sharks and a sawtooth fish
Marine Mammal Pavilion: This is where we house the Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins.
There are obviously other exhibits but these are the ones we are primarily responsible for. We do food prep in the morning to have food for the day, we clean exhibits, feed animals, help with physicals and animal moves, and generally just look out for the health and welfare of the animals and exhibits.
But on top of all of this, we are all scuba divers who just love to dive.
The website is our primary communications tool, where we can request substitute divers when we will miss our visit, sign up for special event dives like night and dinner dives for special guests, and just talk about and stay informed about the dive program in general.
What should the site's new look look like? Well I don't really know. But some ideas to keep in mind are the animals themselves, the aquarium mission (conservation and education) and the divers. Hopefully that helps!
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