Behind the scenes with Marine Mammal Trainer Gwyneth Shephard

Angel:  Hi, my name is Angel.  I’m one of the volunteers at the Vancouver Aquarium, and today, I’m going to interview Gwyneth, one of the sea lion trainers.  So come with me.

Angel: So what is like a typical day for you?

Gwyneth:  Okay, well first thing, we come in in the morning and go down to the food room, the marine mammal food room, and we help sort some fish out, and then we weigh all of the animals’ buckets individually.  We have to be very accurate with the food amounts we feed the sea lions because they are involved in research.  So then once we have all our buckets made out, we usually head out front first, to the display pools and we’ll try and do a session with Tag, and if we have females out there, we’ll do some sessions with the females out front.  And then we come into the back area and work all of our sea lions back here through mostly research behaviours. Then downstairs, wash the buckets, fill them up again, and then do the same thing over again a couple more times during the day.  So right before lunch, we stop and sit at the computer for a while, and type in all our records, what the animals ate, how much they weighed that day. And at the end of the day, again we sit down at the computer, and type in our afternoon sessions.

Angel:  And how do you communicate with them?

Gwyneth:  The communication is actually, I think, one of the most interesting parts about working with the Steller sea lions.  We use voices and our hand signals, which is kind of fun, because most everybody on the team right now actually started out working with the whales and the dolphins, and whales and dolphins can’t hear our voices.  But the sea lions can actually hear our voices so we can communicate with them a lot.

Angel:  So where do they come from, and why are they here?

Gwyneth:  All the Steller sea lions that are here right now came off Port Hardy and Cape Scott area, and they were brought in for the research project because Steller sea lions are in such rapid decline in the wild.  So basically, the Consortium decided that they wanted to help do some research on captive sea lions to see if they could help figure out the problem in the wild.

Angel:  So if somebody wanted to be a sea lion trainer, what do they have to go through, or what kind of education do they have to get?

Gwyneth:  Basically any kind of degree is always a good thing.  Yeah, Bachelor of Science, animal psychology, zoology, marine biology, pretty much anything.  SCUBA diving is also a really good asset to have.  mostly people volunteer first, so the staff gets to know you, and you get to see when postings come up, and also just so we know that the new people do have an idea of what the job really entails because I think sometimes, people think a training job is very glamorous but there is a lot of kind of grunge work, cleaning pools, and making buckets.  And any animal handling experience, working with animals at any point in your life, even dogs and cats, whatever, they always look at that, and in a good way too.

Angel:  Do you have a favourite part of the job?

Gwyneth:  I think when you’re training something new, like the communication, when you’re really trying to get across to them.  When they understand what you’re asking them for, they get really excited and very vocal and, “Oh I figured it out.”  So that’s, I think, my favourite part.  They’re a lot of fun to work with.  I shouldn’t make it sound like it’s too tough.  It’s a lot of fun to work with them.  They can be frustrating some days, but other days, they’re just a blast.  So, all in all, it’s fantastic.