Greatest Adventure

You have always wanted to be a marine biologist. Now after all the years of schooling you are finally starting on your hands on training. You are super excited. You have loved dolphins for as long as you can remember. What surprises you is all the other animals you get to study. The place that you are training has a 100-year-old turtle. That turtle has seen a lot. The story is that it got caught in a net and some fishermen found him and brought him to the center you are training at. You are training there for a month when you get to meet your first dolphin. You are excited to meet them. They are everything you imagined. You work with them for 6 months. You are amazed at how smart they really are. You become almost obsessed with their echo location. You are just amazed with it and start to wonder how it can help humans. You know some blind people use it and you wonder what other applications it can be used for.

Your next animal is a shark. You have always been a little afraid of sharks but the more you have learned about them the less scary the have become. They are just misunderstood. This assignment is one of the coolest you will do in your training. You get to put a tracker on a baby shark and get to follow their progress. The first few days you are glued to your computer following their every move. Eventually you must stop looking at the screen. You put a few more trackers on adult sharks. Your center is trying to track as many as they can because they are afraid, they might become extinct.

That is what the center you are training at focusses on. They try to track as many animals as they can that are in danger of extinction. Everything from turtles to sea lions. So far, they have tagged over a thousand animals. The two main factors for these animals going extinct are overfishing and pollution. Your center is also working with the community and the fisheries to try and help with these problems.

You train at the center for two years. During this time, you learn a lot. After two years you are finally given the opportunity to lead a team. You choice to go to Alaska and study the sea otter and whales. You choose these because they are both on the endangered species list. Also, because whales are now hunting sea otters.

When you arrive your first assignment is to try and estimate how many of each are in the area. Then you put trackers on several whales and sea otters. Then your job is to sit back and watch what happens. You are interested in how many sea otters get attacked by the whales and if poachers are going after the sea otters and whales. The first few weeks you are just watching, and nothing happens. Then you start to notice a few of the whales you are tracking go after some sea otters. The sea otters you are tracking are still alive. A couple of weeks later you lose track of some sea otters. When you get to their last location you find that the poachers had got them. You spend 6 months in Alaska. It was a great first assignment.

You go on to become one of the world’s leading marine biologist. One day you are looking back at your life and remembered where you first did your training. You decided to go visit the center that started it all for you. First you go visit the dolphins. You are surprised that one of them seems to remember you. You never forget your love of them and their echolocation. Half of your career was dedicated to dolphin echolocation and how humans can use it. Next you went to visit the turtles. The turtle you first met on your first day is now 150 years old. The last thing you do is ask if they have the tracking numbers of the sharks when you where there. They do and give them to you. When you get home, you look at the numbers and only one is still active.

A few days later you are on a boat and looking for the shark. You finally find them and are so happy to see them. This one shark has survived 50 years. That is amazing.