This is my third week working at the reef and I did very similar work to what I did during week two. Tech trek, a summer camp of all middle school girls, is spending 2 weeks on campus, and Scott wanted most of his employees working with this group. Scott also wanted some people to keep the REEF up and running, which was my job for this whole week.
The first couple days of this week were very slow. We only had one program scheduled between Monday and Tuesday, so those days were mostly spent cleaning the aquarium and doing the jobs that are only done every once and a while. We carded the tanks (use a credit card to get algae off the sides of the tanks) mopped with bleach, and siphoned the tropical tanks.
On Wednesday me and 4 other reefers went on a mobile to Ojai. We brought hold-fast a tank and some animals to a camp called dream land. 
It was a special day because all of the children attending the camp either had chronic illnesses their family had chronic illness, and when they saw the sea life their eyes filled with joy. We had one tank set up and other organizations had bouncy castles and other fun toys, so throughout the day we had kids swap through all the stations.
Friday was my most busy day because I was helping Nelson all morning with the experiment and worked tech trek all afternoon. Feeding the abalone is a time consuming process, and because they are endangered, and used in a controlled experiment, there is very strict protocol.
You have to pull the pneumatocyst (the air bubble on the kelp to keep it afloat in the water) off of all 60 blades then the kelp must be rinsed 3 different times before it can be fed to the abalone. Following my morning was tech trek’s beach day in which I was scheduled to work the bluff, which is just a small trail on the campus beach. There are 100 plus middle school girls who attend the tech trek camp and I had to take them in groups of 33-34 on the bluff walk.
Aside from work I have been spending most of my time on the busses or in the recreational center. We didn’t get to spend as much time at the beach this week, which is ok cause I want to try and go every day next week.
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