Life of a Shamu trainer!

Aquatica!

James's P.O.V.

So today me and Jen are going to Aquatica on a date! It kinda makes me wonder why though, she doesn't really love water slides...but she picked that, so that's where we will go for the day! I can't wait to spend the day with her, work has caused us to be so busy we never spend time together. Then later tonight we have to go in for the night shift at SeaWorld.

Jen's P.O.V.

I put on my favorite bathing suit and then a Rip Curl swim shirt on and shorts that I got from when we went to Hawaii. My friend Amanda just got a job working with the Commerson's Dolphins at Aquatica. I put my waterproof case on my phone and I'm ready to go! James pulls into our drive way and I run out to his truck.

*~at Aquatica~*

We get there and there is almost no one here! We give the people our tickets and walk in. You can see Kraken and Journey to Atlantis over at SeaWorld. James take my hand and we walk over to see the dolphins. I once spent a week here doing their old trainer for a day program where we spent 1 Week at SeaWorld, 1 week at Aquatica, and 1 week at Discovery cove. While spending a week here I made a bond with Ross a male dolphin here. The moment me and James walk up to the fence Ross comes over and waves at me! I wave back and smile at him.

"Which ride do you want to go on!?" James asks

"Tassie's twister!" I reply! That has always been my favorite ride here, there is nothing that will surprise you, no drops, nothing! But it goes pretty fast and it spins. We climb the stairs and I sit in front, we start to go down the long tube and it starts to speed up as we go farther down. Both me and James are laughing because it is fun! We are then shot into the spinning part and go around and around.

After riding a few rides we come back to the dolphins, we go to the Under water viewing. I see Ross and he comes over then swims away, these dolphins have a lot of energy and almost never stay still! It was so hard trying to train Ross. We finish up the day with a few more rides and then it's time to head to SeaWold.

We are working the night shift so we both brought our wetsuits but also our pajamas just incase we take turns watching over the whales. We head over to Mango Joes for dinner before we go to work. We show them our ID badges and get free dinner, I get chicken nuggets and a coke while James gets a Mango fruit salad and a coke as well! We eat and then decide we still have 2 hours until our shift begins so we'll walk around SeaWorld for a bit. We head over to wild arctic to go on the ride and play with the animals. After playing with the whales and going on the ride we still have an hour left so we go to the Shark encounter.

James hates sharks but I still make him come with me! As we walk through the tunnel, James takes my hand and we watch the sharks together. The park then closes and we have to walk back to Shamu Stadium! As many of the trainers are leaveing a few others are entering.

"Okay! Our first job is to collect any empty buckets around the stadium and bring them down to the fish room for cleaning and for more fish! Then we have to clean the stage and slide outs. Then it's dinner time for the whales, then we have to go clean the UWV glasses. Then we can do a play time to tire out the whales and then it's bed time for them and we can take turns watching over them!" Valerie says "to get this done faster, James, Kyle, Corey and Joe go find buckets. Jen, Ashley, Devinne and Rachel you guys can start cleaning the slide outs. Then Brian and Gracie you guys head to the fish room and start dinner then start washing buckets once they come down to you. And anyone else who I didn't call please go wash the UWV windows!"

We go down to the changing room and get our wetsuits on! Me, Ashley, Devinne and Rachel head to the cleaning room and take out the brushes. We agree to split up, me and Devinne take the slide out and Rachel and Ashley take the two side slide outs by the stage. We scrub all the unseen algae that might make us slip and we brush it away! We finish up and go to the back pools we so them all together (while collecting a few buckets) and finish up. We drop the buckets off in the fish room and put our brushes away. We then go to help prepare dinner for the whales! They have 4 of the 8 whales done, I grab Takara's two buckets and start to fill them with fish and ice! Once we are all done, Joe meets me to help feed Tiki! We meet her at the edge of the pool and call her over. We feed her all her fish, then we weigh and measure her. The Underwater Viewing is already clean so we have a play time!

We bring Katina, Kalina, Nalani, Takara, and Trua into the show pool and throw many toys in. We let them play with themselves and go to play with Taima, Malia and Tilikum. We bring them a few toys but we are going to play more in the Underwater Viewing! Taima comes over to me and James and we ask her to do a few simple behaviors. Corey and Ashley are trying to interact with Malia and Devinne and Brian are hanging with Tili! We play all sorts of games from copy the stuffed Shamu to peek-a-boo! We have some fun and when the whales seem to be tired out we go to check on the rest of the pod. They all looked tired too, except for Trua who is playing by himself with a fish. He keeps throwing it and then racing to get it. We ask Kalina and Katina to push all the toys over to the slide out so we can clean up (yes they do help with that) we then open all the gates (except where Tili, Tai, and Lia are) and let them swim freely!