The marine mammal trainers work very closely with the seals and sea lions at the Aquarium. But you may not know that they work with other marine animals around the Aquarium, too—like lobsters, lumpfish, snakes and even Myrtle the turtle. 

This is a post from trainer Meg Stone, who has been working with a different kind of turtle.

Skip, a Blandings turtle, not only does live animal presentations for the public, but gets training sessions behind the scenes. Teaching Skip helps this shy guy get comfortable meeting new people during these presentation, keeps him active in his environment and allows Skip to participate in his own health care.

Skip is a handsome fellow. Here he is in his container during a live animal presentation!

Throughout the day, like all the animals in the Aquarium, we offer him some enrichment, or play. Here is Skip playing around with some peas.



Come by the Aquarium and you might Skip during a live animal presentations in the Blue Planet Action Center. Or you might see another fascinating animal from our blue planet—like axolotls, lobsters or Eastern box turtles. There's just so much the learn!

Today's post comes to you from Kerry McNally in the Animal Health department. She takes us behind the scenes to show how the Aquarium's veterinarians with the whole health care team take care of its animals. Kerry also blogged extensively when she was with the Sea Turtle Rescue department.

Staff and volunteers work hard to ensure all of the animals at the New England Aquarium are well taken care of. We provide the right food and nutrients, habitat and enrichment opportunities to make sure everyone is healthy. This also means trips to the veterinarian for small and big animals alike. This includes our anacondas!

Checking heart rate

Every year or two, we remove our three large green anacondas from their exhibit and head upstairs to our Animal Health department. We lightly sedate the animals for easy handling, maneuvering and for human and animal safety. Once the snakes are comfortable, our veterinarian begins a thorough physical exam to ensure the snakes are growing properly and to identify any potential health issues early.

The vet starts by evaluating every inch of the body to make sure there are no wounds or scale loss. The next step is to get current weights and lengths. This is no easy task-the anacondas are big! It’s hard to imagine that two of the snakes, Wilson and Marion, were less than a pound when they were born on New Year’s Day 2008. Now they weigh in at over 65 pounds and are over 11 feet long. But they are not the largest snake in the exhibit. That’s our oldest anaconda Kathleen, who weighs in at 101 pounds and is 13.5 feet long!

Radiograph of Wilson's head

Just like an annual physical you might get at your doctor, our vet looks in the mouth and at the eyes, collects a blood sample for analysis and even does radiograms! This allows us to check the snake’s bones for healthy growth, ensures there are no unusual masses and even to see if there are ovarian follicles. It takes quite a few shots to get the full length of a 13 foot animal! After checking lots of x-rays, as well as the rest of the tests, all of our animals look like they are in good shape.

The snakes were then moved to a holding tank once their exams were finished so they could fully recover and slowly wake up from the sedation. They were then returned to the exhibit the next day with no issues. We can now say our anacondas are in good health and, until their next exam, you can see these amazing animals on exhibit in the Freshwater gallery.

The Edge of the Sea touch tank lets visitors get up close to some local tidepool animals, and often times there are small lobsters on display. Only a few inches long, these animals come from the New EnglandAquarium’s Lobster Lab, where we grow young lobsters in order to study their growth patterns, shell rot and impacts of climate change.

Lobster growing in our lobster rearing facility

Finished trap

Construction started...

Nets being added

Deploying the trap in Edge of the Sea

Caught ya!

Happy Mike!

And they live in the colorful Pacific Reef Community at the New England Aquarium. We're talking about two unique and beautiful species of fish with "unicorn" in their common names!

Can you find the unicorn tang and bignose unicornfish in this picture?

Without even knowing its common name, you might guess that this fish is known as a unicorn. It's the unicorn tang with an impressive horn protruding from the area near its eyes. These fish can grow to be more than a foot long, light bluish color with a gray underbelly. While these fish are listed as Least Concern according to the IUCN Red List, this species is a targeted food fish. There have been significant reductions in biomass in parts of its range.

Unicorn tang (Naso unicornis)

Now the bignose unicornfish is easy to distinguish from the other unicorn in the exhibit. This fish is more than a foot long with a darker blue pattern of dots and vertical lines. Most notably, adults develop a rounded snout and unusually tall dorsal and anal fins. Their populations are stable, listed of least concern according to the IUCN. But they are usually found on coral reefs, which are vulnerable as a result of degraded by water pollution, human pollution pressures, overfishing, tourism, Crown of Thorns sea star outbreaks and coral bleaching.

Bignose unicornfish (Naso vlaningii)

In the wild, you can find bignose unicornfish throughout the Indo Pacific in lagoons and seaward reefs. These are among the larger fish in the exhibit so it'll be easy to spot them weaving their way through the colorful corals along the tank.

Look for these unicorns on Level One near the rockhopper penguins. The Pacific Reef Community is buzzing with colors, patterns and movement. And if you're feeling adventurous, try to spot the dragons on Level Two!