Feeding 8,000 animals daily a delicate ballet
TAMPA — Theo, 3, isn’t really into the lake smelt being served for breakfast, so he flips his head back and spits the little fish at the woman in the rubber boots.
“He’s so dramatic about it,” says Michelle Uhlig.
The palm-sized Peruvian smelt, however, he devours in a gulp.
Theo’s roommate Josh, who is around 10 and is also a rescue pelican who can no longer fly, is a bit more polite, eating whatever comes his way.
Few people who’ve spent time around a fishing dock in Florida might imagine a brown pelican as picky, but the birds at the Florida Aquarium have the luxury. Twice a day, someone comes by with a big tray of restaurant-quality seafood and feeds it to them by hand. It’s a menu tailored just for them.
Some mornings, before the aquarium opens to guests, Uhlig, a senior biologist, lets the boys out of their enclosure. They waddle past the other birds in the wetlands dome and down to the coral reef exhibit to watch the sharks and other fish for a while.
Seven days a week, dozens of staffers feed the more than 8,000 animals in their care. The daily undertaking is a ballet of preparation, timing, nutrition and enrichment. Each of the 300 species has a unique diet.
The economics and practices of the global seafood market play a role, as much as the biologist carefully chopping squid to the exact size of a puffer fish’s mouth.
The food, which is fit for human consumption, costs around $1,000 a day, the aquarium said, and more than $300,000 a year.
A surprisingly large number of the animals are fed individually, by hand, even the aquatic ones. This is partly so that their consumption can be carefully logged, and referenced later by veterinarians if needed.
The otters, Kraken and Brandon, get this kind of treatment, though from a safe distance. They’re adorable, but have extremely sharp teeth and the bite force of a German shepherd.
Brandon hops up and down like an excited puppy when biologist Chrissy Beuchel approaches with cups of night smelt, capelin and hard-boiled eggs attached to her belt. Kraken is more nonchalant as Beuchel reaches over the glass to toss them down, one at a time, as happens four to six times a day.
Sometimes they’ll get rainbow trout, Kraken’s favorite, or something for “novel enrichment,” a sort of out-of-the-ordinary
treat possibly served in a puzzle. That could mean little fish frozen into a red popsicle, or a thawed-out frozen chick.
Kraken, “who’s a little on the chunkier end of things right now,” Beuchel says, was switched to his summer diet, a lighter, seasonal adjustment made under watch of the veterinary staff when the otters start to nap a lot in the afternoon.
The relationships and behaviors formed through feeding this way are tied to the animals’ health beyond just nutrition. “Jackpotting” food carefully for certain behaviors is how you train an otter to voluntarily present its tail through a hole, allowing blood to safely be drawn for checkups.
But the otters live alone. Other strategies are required to deal with the aquarium’s 500,000-gallon centerpiece coral reef, where dozens of diverse species live side by side. Many require individualized diets and the same kind of one-on-one feeding.
On the roof above the reef, Anna Garcia, holding a blue and white target shaped like a football, lowers herself into the water on a mechanical platform and calls out for Mikey the nurse shark. The shark appears, and Garcia lets go of a hunk of fish near Mikey’s mouth. Thunk!
The sound of Mikey sucking the food in with a powerful vacuum force is surprisingly loud. Garcia glides her hand over the shark’s back and presents another hunk. Thunk!
A few yards away, Antony Curry is in that same water up to his waist, holding a
black and white striped disc while feeding the spotted eagle rays. Beuchel stands on a ledge on the other side, holding a white disc with a black turtle silhouette, as she uses tongs to feed shrimp to Shelldon, a loggerhead sea turtle. Because Shelldon, another rescue, can’t swallow that well, the pokey heads have been carefully removed for him.
All used target feeding, a carefully trained behavior where animals recognize and come to their specific targets so they can be fed separately in a community tank.
Even an animal as basic as a jellyfish can learn when and where to expect food. You can tell when the aquarium’s moon jellies have eaten brine shrimp — consumed through the same orifice they excrete from — because you can see their flower-shaped stomach has filled up through their translucent bell.
“Good boy, Bran,” Curry coos to the youngest of the rays, a former resident of Orlando’s Discovery Cove, as he swims off to chew a clam.
“Everyone secretly baby talks to their animals,” Garcia said, laughing. “Some might say, ‘I don’t do that,’ and then you’ll catch them in a back area talking to them. ... It’s because we love them.”
It’s that sort of closeness that allows her, moments later, to easily roll Mikey over on his back to closely inspect him.
Victoria Fagg even sees personality in the 18 millipedes she brings fruit and veggies to in the mornings, watermelon being their favorite.