Hi, I'm Leslie Mueller.
Welcome to "Museum Access,"
the show that takes you
behind the scenes
at America's top museums.
Today we're at the
John G. Shedd Aquarium
located on Chicago's
beautiful lakefront.
It's one of the world's
largest indoor aquariums
welcoming 2 million
guests every year.
Since opening its doors
in 1930,
it has become home to over
32,000 aquatic animals
from sharks and stingrays
to whales and snails.
We're going to begin in
the spectacular oceanarium,
home to dolphins
and beluga whales.
Then we'll get
a behind-the-scenes peek
at a special beluga
whales training session,
and we'll visit
the onsite animal hospital.
Then we'll take a peek into
the aquarium kitchen
that prepares food
for all 32,000 residents
and learn about
some exciting new projects
involving the aquarium's
3D printer, prosthetics,
and one lucky lizard.
We have a full day ahead of us,
so let's dive in.
Mick, thank you so much
for letting us come
to the oceanarium today.
- Of course. It's great
to have you here.
- What a great space.
- It is, isn't it?
- So who lives here? Tell me.
- Who lives here? So we have
Pacific white-sided dolphins.
- I'm hearing them.
They're calling us.
- They're actually
answering right now.
- They are.
- Pacific white-sided dolphins,
beluga whales,
penguins, sea lions,
and sea otters.
- And they're all in here
happily living together?
- They're all here.
- That is incredible.
Now, it looks like--I mean this
is a huge space, obviously,
right on Chicago's lakefront.
Are there shows
that go on here, or--
- There are. So we have the One
World Aquatic Performance
that goes on every day
multiple times a day,
and it's a great time
for our trainers
to show all
the natural behaviors
that our animals learn here
and show how the trainers
interact and bond
with the animals.
- So are the animals familiar
with the specific trainers,
or can they just pretty
much train with anyone?
- All of our marine
mammals trainers
interact pretty much with
all the different animals.
Some of them have specialties,
but during the performance,
you'll see them work
with a wide variety
of different dolphins
or belugas.
- So I saw a Caribbean reef
when I came in the front door.
Tell me about that exhibit.
- So Caribbean Reef has been
thrilling people for decades.
It was actually built
in the 1970s,
so there's a lot of different
species in that habitat,
from stingrays to different
types of tropical fish.
- Well, I thought I spotted
a diver in there.
Was that something that happens
daily here, or what is that?
- So our divers regularly
do chats as they dive,
and they feed the animals.
They actually interact
with the public outside.
We have them on a microphone,
so people outside
can ask questions
about the animals inside
and really make a connection
with that animal
and with that diver
who's really familiar
with all the species
that are in there.
- So what else is near
the Caribbean Reef?
- Amazon Rising is a really,
really great one.
We have an enormous
python in there.
We have various types
of aquatic fish
that are native to the Amazon
like the Giant Arapaima.
Below street level,
lower and one of the newer
parts of Shedd Aquarium,
is Wild Reef.
Now, Wild Reef is really great
because all the habitats
in there
mimic the reefs that are found
in the Philippines.
What's really cool
is you can see
multiple species of sharks.
From sand sharks
to bamboo sharks,
they're all in
this gigantic habitat
that's curved 12 feet of glass
that kind of mimics
a diver's eye-view
as if they're looking around,
and looking at it,
you can see all these
different species
swimming together that are--
- And they all cohabitate?
- They all do.
- It's such an exciting
aquarium,
and I know it's one
of the world's largest,
and I know there's
lots to explore
that we're not even
touching on,
but I know we are gonna get a
little behind the scenes tour,
so thank you.
- Are you ready?
- Let's go.
- All right.
- Let's dive in, as they say.
- I think that sounds great.
- All right, here we go.
- All right.
- So Mick, we're still
in the oceanarium, right,
but I know we got
a special treat,
a "enrichment session,"
do you call it,
for the beluga whales?
- We do. Actually right now
we're about to see
an enrichment session
that's done by our trainers.
It's a regular part
of their daily activities
where our trainers
have a time to bond with them
to see them do certain
behaviors
and kind of check them up
to make sure
they're healthy and thriving,
and so we're about to see
what's gonna happen.
- And how do the beluga whales
know that these sessions
are starting?
Are they kind of brought over
from a certain part
of the tank, or how does--
- So they actually have
a certain shape
that the trainers
will hold up.
It's a different color
and a different shape,
and the animals
recognize that and know
it's time
to start the enrichment.
It's almost like their nametag.
- Oh, isn't that interesting.
Well, I can't wait to do so.
Thank you so much
for giving us this peek.
- No problem.
Let's check it out.
[calm music]
♪ ♪
- Spring time means pebbles,
sticks,
and a chance for baby chicks.
Yep, spring time for penguins
means nesting season
has arrived.
As the penguins
prepare to pair up,
the animal care team
places sticks
and pebbles into
their habitat,
and they begin
to collect materials
to arrange their nests.
Feeding over 32,000 residents
is quite an undertaking.
Food prep begins
each day at 5:00 a.m.
with over 750 pounds
of fresh fish to prepare.
Interns arrive at 6:30 a.m. to
begin going through every item
looking for any imperfections.
If they find any, it's
composted to reduce waste.
These marine mammals
get the best of the best
in their diet.
The sea otters present
a special challenge.
It costs the aquarium more
to feed the sea otters
than the beluga whales,
white-sided dolphins,
California sea lions,
birds of prey, dogs,
and penguins combined.
They have no blubber
on their bodies,
so their thick coats
and high metabolism
help keep them warm along
with a lot of fresh seafood.
They enjoy a mixture of clams,
pollock, squid,
and shrimp four times a day.
One otter can eat almost ten
pounds of seafood every day,
excluding treats like krill
cubes and formula treats,
plus shellfish
and crabs once a week.
When baby sea otters are
raised at the Shedd Aquarium,
they are fed a clam-water
formula every few hours
to keep them warm
and nourished.
The next phase begins
at five to eight weeks
when very small
pieces of seafood
are introduced to their diet.
At six to nine months,
they graduate to solid food.
Let's see.
Top quality seafood four times
a day sounds good to me.
Dr. Caryn, thank you so much
for letting us come down
to this sneak peek
of the animal hospital.
- My pleasure.
- This is so cool.
- It is very cool, and actually
this is kind of my dream job,
so I think it's cool too.
- I bet. I bet it's a lot
of people's dream jobs.
- Well, it is. I mean,
this is the kind of job you
come to work
and you learn something
new every day,
and that's what keeps
it really exciting.
- That I believe. Now tell me,
what are we looking at here?
- So this is fairly similar to
what you'd see at a--you know,
if you took your dog to a vet
and there's
a veterinary hospital,
you're gonna see equipment
like monitoring equipment,
Doppler, where we might
get heart rates.
That's a multi-function monitor
where we may get information
about blood pressure,
and then the machine
next to it is a ultrasound.
That's actually
really important.
We use that for a lot.
A lot of people know ultrasound
as, like, sonography,
so when a woman's pregnant and
you're checking on the baby,
we do the same thing with that
when our dolphins
or our whales are pregnant,
and what we can do
is that machine
actually pops right off
of the cradle it's on.
We take it tank-side and scan
them right next to the tank.
- Oh, that's wonderful.
- And the nice thing is
they're in water,
so we don't need
to use any goo, so--
- So you don't necessarily
have to bring
some of the larger aquatic
animals into this area.
- Yes. It would be kind of hard
to move a beluga
into a hospital.
- Yeah, I was looking at
those whales thinking,
"What do you do
if there's an issue?" Yeah.
- So we do quite a lot of house
calls actually,
so we--you know, all of our
equipment's portable,
so I'd say about 50%
of the exams
we do we'll do up here
in the hospital.
Another 50 we'll actually go
to them in their enclosure,
so for example,
if we're doing a shark exam,
we're not gonna bring
the shark up here.
We'll go down to the shark,
and we can do the exams
either awake,
depending on the species,
or some of them
we may gently sedate
so we can take blood,
look in their mouth,
take x-rays if needed,
and basically do the whole
nine yards for the physicals.
- I also think being one of
the world's largest aquariums,
you must run in to procedures
that you need to do
that maybe
haven't been done before,
or are you sharing information
with other aquariums?
- Yeah, that's
an excellent point you make.
So you know, we often joke
in veterinary medicine
that doctors kind of
have it easy
'cause they only have
to know one species.
- That's true.
- For us, I mean,
you think about Shedd,
we've got, you know,
over 1,500 species...
- Oh, my gosh.
- ...so I think, you know,
you learn a lot
by your colleagues,
by doing, and you have
to share that material.
- So Dr. Caryn, what is this
here that we're looking at?
- So we're looking right now
at an x-ray,
or we call a "radiograph,"
of a California moray eel,
and you know, I'll teach you
how to read an x-ray,
x-ray 101.
- Oh, good. Okay.
- So head of the animal's
to your left,
tail's to your right,
and this is their spine,
and then what
the aquarists noticed
is that there was this mass
around the belly of this animal
that it saw sticking out,
but it wasn't associated
with it eating, and so it said,
"Hey, doc, can you come
check this out?"
And so sure enough,
we saw this mass.
We did an ultrasound
or sonogram,
and it was consistent
with the mass in the stomach.
We did x-rays, and then
we even took a biopsy,
and unfortunately the biopsy
came back as cancer,
pretty significant cancer,
and so the election
was made to go ahead
and take this animal
to surgery.
I'm gonna scroll through
just to show you.
This is actually
after the surgery.
So the animal
was taken to surgery,
and we actually had
to resect the stomach,
or take the stomach out,
and then put
the ends back together
so the animal could eat
after the surgery.
You can see right in here
the animal's asleep,
and we actually don't
do surgery underwater
because if you did surgery
underwater,
tank water would go
inside their body,
and they're not filled
with tank water,
so what we do
is we sedate them in water
with some powdered anesthetic.
Then we take them out, and then
we put this tube in their mouth
and then that keeps the water
flowing over their gills
while they stay asleep
for the surgery.
- Oh, my gosh.
- And the surgery lasted about
three-and-a-half hours.
It was a long time.
- And you're
monitoring anesthesia?
While there, you're
monitoring everything.
- We are.
We can monitor their heartrate.
We monitor
their respiratory rate.
We can take blood samples
during the procedure
if we need to.
I think I have a couple more
pictures I can scroll, too,
just showing--that's a snake,
not the eel.
- Whoa.
- So here's kind of a close-up,
so this is how the animal's
laid out during surgery
on her back in a little trough.
These little tubes
are helping her breathe,
and then we do the surgery,
and here's a close-up
of that tube in her mouth
which flows the gills over.
- I see.
- Now, if a dog or cat
or a person was having surgery,
the doctor would cover them
with sterile cloth drapes,
but we can't use cloth on fish
because it abrades their skin.
They have a protective mucus.
So instead we use
sterile plastic sheeting.
It does the same thing, but it
keeps them nice and moist,
and it keeps them
at the appropriate temperature,
and then we can work with them
without hurting their skin.
So here we're doing a voluntary
ultrasound, or sonogram,
of a pregnant beluga whale,
and so the nice thing
is these animals are trained
to sort of come over
to the edge of the pool,
and we can take this
nice little
portable ultrasound machine
and get down, and we're
wearing boots, and scan them.
The cool thing is
you don't need any gooey gel
because they're in water...
- Oh, yeah.
- ...and it's really nice,
and again,
this is all voluntary,
so the animal will just lay out
and we can see them.
They have really
good relationships
with their trainers.
- Do they get really huge
when they're pregnant? Like--
- They do. You can see it.
- They do?
- Oh, yeah.
- Wow.
- This is one of our ultrasounds
showing the little fin
of the baby
when it's inside the mommy,
inside the mommy's uterus,
and then here's a picture
showing a birth happening.
This is one of our Pacific
white-sided dolphins,
and you can see that
the tails come out first,
and that's completely normal,
and we want that
to come out first
so the tail can get a chance to
kind of stiffen up in the water
'cause that's really
gonna be their paddle
to get up to breathe
'cause they're air-breathers
just like us.
- That first breath is--I see.
- Very, very important.
- Today, Maverick,
the Fly River turtle,
is getting his yearly exam.
The staff starts at the front
and works their way back
beginning
with the eyes and nose.
By the way,
the Fly River turtle
is also known as
the "pig-nosed turtle."
Maverick also
gets his skin checked.
His flippers are unique.
The Flying River turtle
is the only freshwater turtle
in the world with flippers.
They can literally fly
through the water.
They check his back legs,
digits,
and joints to be sure
everything looks great.
They also check
inside the shell
looking for masses, tumors,
and eggs in female turtles.
If you wonder how you
can tell the males
from the female turtles,
look at their tails.
Males have a longer,
fatter tail.
Most turtles in the wild
have hard shells.
So do the Flying River
turtles,
but theirs is underneath
the leathery skin on top.
The vet looks for any
swelling or missing skin.
They also check underneath.
This area is called
"the plastron."
Looks good.
They listen to his heartbeat
with a Doppler
ultrasonic probe.
Next up, the weigh-in.
Even x-rays
and measurements are taken.
Well, Maverick passed
his physical exam today
with flying colors,
so he's heading back
with a clean bill of health.
[warm music]
♪ ♪
So Wade, we're in this teen
center. Tell me about this.
- Yeah, so this is a space that
we opened in September of 2013,
and it's a pilot space,
so we're working out
trying to figure out
what it's gonna be like,
but the whole point of it is
so that we can have teens drive
everything that goes on
in this space,
so it's built for them.
It's built by them.
They picked out the furniture.
They picked out the colors,
the technology,
and they drive the curriculum,
so we don't have
a traditional curriculum
or a map of what
the activities are in the lab.
It's really based
on teens dropping in,
telling us what
they want to work on
and what projects
they're interested in.
- But most of them are involved
with biology
or animal behavior?
I mean, what--
- Yeah.
- Just different backgrounds?
- Everything.
- Everything. All of the above.
- Yeah, so we cross
your traditional stuff
where they want to be
a marine biologist
or the dolphin trainer, right,
but we also have folks
who come here
with a background in art
or an interest
in the natural world.
It's not always
marine science, so--
And we try to hybrid that,
so we have them
working on activities
that might be a little
more art-oriented,
so they're 3D printing,
or they're doing
watercolor painting.
But when they're
watercolor painting,
they might be looking
at macro invertebrates
under a microscope
and painting those things.
- Sure, instead of a landscape
or whatever.
- Right. Yeah,
so they get that kind of mix,
and so even if their passion,
they want to be a graphic
designer someday,
they can grow up
and go through the teen lab
and use the mission of Shedd
Aquarium or the natural world
as, like, their inspiration
for doing that.
- Do they get to
go upstairs too, or--
- Yeah, so we always
have projects
going on that they can
connect to upstairs,
and so it's free to come
to the teen lab,
and whenever they've
got a project--
- It's free?
- It's free, yep.
- Wow. Where was this
when I was a kid?
I would've loved this.
- We get that a lot
actually, yeah.
- I bet.
- So yeah, so they come
to the teen lab,
and they get to work
on a project here with us,
and if it requires
something upstairs,
we take them upstairs,
and we work with, you know,
the exhibit design team
or the fishes team
or whoever is working
on the exhibit
they're interested in
and connect them that way.
- I just can imagine
if you have
even a smidgeon of interest
in the sciences,
to be able to come
to a place like this
just opens up your whole world,
all these different careers.
- Right, yeah, and actually
one of the cool things
is that we have mentors from
every department
in the building
who spend time in the lab
and work on their actual
day-to-day work in the labs.
They come in. They don't
even leave workshops.
They come in and
bring their real work,
their authentic challenges,
and they spend time in the lab
getting feedback from teens
and really getting to that
where the teen can say,
"Hey, can I help?
Like, how do I get to do
what you're doing?"
- Yeah, absolutely.
- And really connect
to them that way,
and that's every department.
We're talking
our technology team,
graphic designers, our marine
mammal team, animal trainers,
all those folks from every
department in the building
so that teens get to see that,
"Yeah, there's marine biology.
There's dolphin training,
"but there's all of
these other careers
in the world
of the aquarium as well."
- Thank you so much
for talking with us today
about this great--
the teen center
and your 3D printer project.
- Yes.
- I know that you're the head
of a very interesting project
for one lucky--It
was a lizard, right?
- It's a lizard,
a Caiman Lizard, yes.
- What happened?
- Well, actually I don't know
all the details on it,
but it turned out that during
a routine medical exam,
they found that the lizard
had a--what looked like a tumor
on his right foot,
his right back foot,
and it turned out
after doing some further
testing that it was cancer,
and unfortunately
in order to play it safe
and keep him
as healthy as possible,
they had to make the decision
to amputate
the right back foot.
- Okay, and now what?
I mean, so I guess the decision
is "What do we do?
Do we have this poor lizard
living without the foot, or--"
- Right. Right, so it turns out
after he healed
from the surgery,
he seemed like he was
getting along just fine,
not--you know, not perfect.
He was sort of adapting
to his situation,
but what a vet tech and some
other vets decided that,
"Why don't we explore
the possibility
"of making a prosthetic
foot for him
"so that he can walk
a little more normally,
keep his hips
a little more even--"
- Enter Kristen. Yeah.
- Yeah, improve his life
a little bit, so--
- Sure.
- Yeah.
- So what would
the first step be?
I see you've got
this great visual here.
- Right, so what we
wanted to do
is make a copy of the foot
that he has in order--
- The good foot?
- The good foot--in order
to replace the missing foot,
and without that
right foot anatomy,
we needed to employ
some technology
in order to get
the anatomy correct
and be able to create at least
a possibly life-like
replica of his right foot.
- Well, now this was not
something that was normally
in your wheelhouse, was it?
I mean, you're doing exhibits
and other things, but--
- No, right.
- But what a fun challenge.
- Right. We do a lot
of model making,
and so we do replicate
whole animals,
usually, in order to do,
like, exhibit elements.
We do copying of starfish
and different kinds of animals
just so we can have
plastic models of them
to illustrate things
that a person wouldn't be able
to touch here at the aquarium,
but something that
they could look at and feel
and get close up to without
touching the real thing.
- So here's
the 3D printer, right?
- Yes.
- Is this the actual
prosthetic, Kristen?
- Um, this is actually
a prototype
that we printed,
and it has the correct anatomy
of the right foot,
so actually it's made out
of plastic that's--uh-oh.
Pretty strong.
- Oh, just lost a toe.
- Right.
Hence the prototype, yeah.
- But it's hard, right?
I mean, you were saying--
- It's hard. It's hard plastic,
right, exactly,
and so this foot
is the right size.
We measured it by millimeters
and everything,
and in the end what we'll do
is take different materials
and modify that further
making a mold of that,
and then using a whole lot
of different materials to test
because we're not sure
exactly what'll work best
for the animal,
for the environment
that he's walking around in.
- Well,
it's an experiment, yeah.
- It's an experiment.
- So the information comes
from the printer--I mean,
from the computer
that we were just looking at,
and then it feeds in
to this system,
and then how does this
actually come to be?
- So right,
so the simple version
of how a 3D printer works
is that a spool of plastic wire
is actually fed
through an extruder
which is heated up
to 230 degrees roughly,
and it actually traces a path
that the computer tells it to
and makes the object
in three dimensions,
so it starts to layer it up.
- From the bottom?
- From the bottom, right,
so it's additive manufacturing
is what it's called,
so yeah, so from the bottom up,
it'll--this is the last row is
right there at the tippy-top.
- And how long does something
like this size take?
- This one was probably
about 45 minutes.
- Wow.
- Yeah, there's a little bit
of a wait.
- And then you could have
a spool with different
materials in it, or no?
That would always
be the material?
- Right. Ideally for this
machine it only uses
one type of plastic,
but there are other machines
in the world
that can do
pretty much anything,
including live human material.
They can--they've started
to try to 3D print organs
and kind of like the sky's
the limit with that.
- So they'd be much
bigger units?
- Yeah, right. Exactly.
- Tell me a little bit about
how the fitting is going.
I know it's not actually
on the lizard yet.
Are you anticipating soon?
- Right. We've tried it on him
a few times just to see
if it works
and just to make sure
we have the right shape
and the right angle
to make sure
that he can actually
walk with it,
so a few times he's
kicked it off
because it just didn't work.
- Well, it's new.
- It's a new thing, yeah,
so we're thinking we're getting
really close to something
he could wear
for a certain amount of time.
We're not really sure yet,
but--
- What fun that will be,
though, the first time
you see him actually
walking on it,
so we'll have to come
back for that.
- Okay, yeah. Definitely.
- What a great trip to the
John G. Shedd Aquarium today.
Getting a chance
to go behind the scenes
with the beluga whales,
the veterinary hospital,
the food kitchen,
the teen learning center,
and learning about
the 3D printing process
really was an adventure,
so don't miss the chance
to come explore
the aquarium next time
you're in Chicago.
Thanks for joining us
on "Museum Access"
where every visit
is an adventure.
