He plunged feet first, right into his dream job
While he says he could never survive in a typical office, Chris Bauernfeind of Jamaica Plain doesn't mind being cooped up inside all day. His office happens to be four stories high and 40 feet wide. It's surrounded by windows. And it's filled to the top with water warmed year-round to an extremely pleasant 74 degrees.
Bauernfeind, 38, is a diver (technically "Aquarist II") in the Giant Ocean Tank at the New England Aquarium. He scored the enviable gig two and a half years ago after studying marine biology in graduate school at University of North Carolina at Wilmington and then volunteering at the aquarium.
While he says his salary is not especially amazing (in the low-$30,000s), Bauernfeind says he's just happy to be paid to do something he loves. His job entails introducing new species to the tank, wrangling hurt fish, and helping feed the 600-plus sea creatures that swirl around the tank, including moray eels, rays, and sea turtles.
Oh yeah, and sharks.
Tell me about the sharks you feed. Three of them are sand tiger sharks - not to be confused with tiger sharks - and we have one nurse shark. We offer our sharks food from a stick twice a day. They wouldn't normally eat that much in the wild. It's to, um, keep them from eating the other fish.
You feed them much more than they would get in the wild? Definitely. Sharks in the wild would eat only once a week, maybe once a month.
Are your sharks fat? Our sharks tend to have a little more weight than sharks in the wild. We're trying to keep them from eating the other fish. It's definitely easy street for them. They eat food off a stick. It's much easier to get takeout than to go hunt your food down.
Are these sharks dangerous to humans? No. Our sharks are good for this exhibit because they are not an aggressive species. They look aggressive - they have big shiny teeth and they leave their mouth open part of the time so the visitors get to see the teeth through the window. But they don't go after us. If they're really hungry, they might go after some of the fish in the tank.
Were you nervous getting into the tank for the first time? Yes, but not because of the sharks. It was more about going into this huge exhibit and having all these people staring at me. It can be a little hard to move around in your wetsuit and your fins. I have seen people take a spill off the platform into the tank and that's kind of embarrassing. You have all these people looking at you. And plus, you have those windows all the way around the tank.
So when you're in there, you can see out, see faces and people? Yup. People love to wave at the divers. Some of the children, they're more enthused about the divers than the actual fish in the tank.
Why do you think that is? Well, it's not natural for humans to be underwater. So if you're looking at this big giant fish tank, full of sea turtles and sharks, and then you see a person swimming by: for a kid, that's pretty cool.
Are you allowed to interact with the crowd? Not only allowed, it's part of my job almost. Sometimes I hang upside down in the window, wave at the kids. I'm waving all the time, constantly.
What is it like inside the tank when the aquarium is full of screaming elementary school kids? It's wonderful. It's near silence. Just today, I was out on the platform and there was hundreds of people, and that's great, that's why we're there, for people to come visit us. But it gets kind of loud sometimes, and when I get to jump underwater and it gets silent, it's wonderful. There's a place where the loggerhead sea turtles nap, you can go down and hang out with them.
What do people ask you as you're about to dive in? Are you scared to go in there, are the sharks going to attack you, how old is that turtle? The other day I came out on the platform, I'm putting on my fins with my dive buddy, and the kids are all excited, 'Oh my god it's a diver,' and some kids started shooting me questions. Then one kid's like, 'You're gonna die! Don't go in!' I, of course, have to tell him that I'm not going to die, I've done this hundreds of times.
Do the aquarists hang out together? Yes, we do hang out. It's a good family. First couple times I hung out with these people my wife came with me, but now that doesn't happen because all we talk about is fish. We anthropomorphize some of the fish in the tank - you know, what they're doing, what they're saying, and it's kind of hard not to do that after you've had a beer. There's some gossip going on, with people, and about animals in the tank. I might talk about how Myrtle [the green sea turtle] is just being a pain in the butt. How she wouldn't leave me alone when I was feeding some of the fish in the tank. How I scratched her back a little.
She can feel that? With her shell? Oh yes, definitely. Probably number one thing I do when I take a guest in is take them down and scratch Myrtle's back. She'll sit right there and move her back around. She actually scratches her own back sometimes: she wedges herself underneath the reef.
