A day with the sea lions

I had quite the experience the other day. Now as interns we get to help with the sea lions just a bit. This is b/c they can be pretty dangerous, but also b/c the sea lions in our area are in training. These means we have two young sea lions, also two older sea lions that came have minimal training (or had good training years and years ago). The thing that made the day cool was that I got to help and interact with all of them. With Leona Kai (3yr old) they are working with her to be less skittish and nervous in different environments. I got to help do A to B's with here. This means the trainer sends her to me, I re-enforce the behavior, and then send her back. We did this outside of the enclosure so she was ooh soo cute running back and forth in front of me. The trainers then had Wyland (2yr old) out in the pool to practice him getting use to interactions, so I got to put my hands on his back and pet him. What a squeal of delight!!! Another experience I had was with Ma'alea (older near-blind sea lion once trained), working on her interacting with people. So Azu had her give me some kisses; the funny thing about this is I was on her blind side so when Azu said kiss she didn't know where to go. Which means she once necked with me (kinda scary for me) then kissed Azu's wetsuit, and then finally got it right and kissed me on the cheek. They are also working on bringing Kamani (large older sea lion) out of the enclosure. So I got to act as a spectator so she can get use to people around.

I also got to do a sea lion interaction yesterday, these pictures are from that. Ohhh Sooo Cute...


Maukele gives me a kiss, whats with the snarl?!?


Maukele still snarling