This is a post from a team of Aquarium staff and supporters who are participating in an extreme obstacle course event called the Tough Mudder this spring. They have been posting about their training methods, animals that inspire them to work hard and they will be raising funds to support the Aquarium. You can help them out by donating to support their efforts.

Today's post comes from Deb Bobek, Director of Visitor Experience for the Aquarium. You may remember her by her Team Tiburon alter ego Flame.

Anyone who is a regular follower of Aquarium blogs knows that we have an active Rescue and Rehabilitation program for sea turtles and other marine animals. (Check out the Rescue Blog here.) Each late fall and early winter, anywhere between 20 to more than 100 sea turtles strand along Cape Cod beaches, found suffering from hypothermia, and often dehydration and pneumonia. 


Four Kemp’s ridley sea turtles rescued by the New England Aquarium in a rehabilitation tank

Now, Team Tiburon was willing to risk hypothermia to take on the Tough Mudder challenge, but we didn’t expect to have something else in common with these sea turtles. Sadly, many of the stranded sea turtles come in with various injuries – and injuries have plagued our team as well. Chrys has been suffering a sore tentacle (okay fine, knee) and like the invasive species he is, Lion has faced a multitude of aches and strains.

Some of the most serious injuries that the sea turtles arrive with are broken bones or broken shells. And one of Team Tiburon’s members has experienced something similar. That’s right, Elasmo, our fearless originator of Team Tiburon, has suffered a stress fracture of his left tibia leaving him unable to compete in this Saturday’s Tough Mudder challenge.


(L) Photos of a rescued Kemp’s ridley sea turtle named Route showing both a broken flipper and shell at a follow-up exam in 2009 (R) X-ray of Elasmo’s tibia

But fear not Team Tiburon followers!  Just as our rescued sea turtles can be treated and rehabilitated, so too will Elasmo follow a treatment and rehabilitation program and then Team Tiburon will reunite to do a second Tough Mudder challenge in July with Elasmo leading the charge!


Top: Route with a metal bar holding his bone in place and wires holding his shell together 
Bottom: Elasmo’s air cast

We hope to keep you updated as Elasmo completes his rehabilitation and we get ready for a second Tough Mudder challenge, but in the meantime the rest of Team Tiburon: Cuddle, Lion, Flame, Chrys, Mudskipper, and Hawk will participate in this weekend’s Tough Mudder challenge with Elasmo cheering us on. So wish us luck and remember – your support can help fund our new Giant Ocean Tank where many rescued sea turtles (like our loggerhead turtles Carolina and Retread) make their home.  So make your donation today!


A happy ending for Route as he is released back into the ocean in May of 2009. We expect a full recovery from Elasmo as well!

~ Flame

Please contribute to their fundraising efforts for the New England Aquarium and share this post to spread the word. Catch up on previous posts here.

This is the fourth in a series of posts from a team of Aquarium staff and supporters who are participating in an extreme obstacle course event called the Tough Mudder this spring. They will be posting about their training methods, animals that inspire them to work hard and they will be raising funds to support the Aquarium. You can help them out by donating to support their efforts.

Today’s blog post comes from Deb Bobek, also known as Flame.

Teamwork. It’s one of those concepts that’s easy to talk about but not always easy to execute. And as noted in our first post, the only way to get through the Tough Mudder is through teamwork and collaboration. There are many examples of teamwork in the oceans, but here are three quick ones that Team Tiburon looks to for inspiration.

Schooling fish coordinate their movements to make themselves look bigger, which provides protection from predators.

 
Visitors can see schooling fish like these blueback herring in the Temperate Gallery of the Aquarium.

Aquarium researchers have been studying Surface Active Groups (SAGs) link in North Atlantic right whales for many years and have discovered that these groups provide opportunities for mating, social bonding and play.


Surface active groups (Photo by Tracy Montgomery on the Right Whale Research Blog)

And finally, check out this teamwork between our two baby sea lions who often make appearances during the Aquarium’s training sessions in the New Balance Foundation Marine Mammal Center.



So how did we put all of this inspiration to work? Team Tiburon recently spent a day at Hale Reservation on a ropes and wall course where we faced our own daunting challenges that could only be surmounted through teamwork – coordinating our movements, communicating and working together.  Check out the video here:



And if you really want to see some teamwork, join us on Friday at 12:30 or 2:45 p.m. in the Marine Mammal Center where we will take on the challenge that was extended to us by Team Phoca (made up of our Northern fur seals) and see which one of us is better adapted to survive the obstacles that the Tough Mudder is going to throw at us. 


Note: The Northern fur seals will not actually be participating in the Tough Mudder competition, although they’d be right at home in the cold water.


Team Tiburon practicing the Aquaman pose for our upcoming challenge.  Hopefully it will help! (Photo credit: Tina Mallios/Koukla)

Come cheer for your favorite team and see which team prevails!

~Flame

Stay tuned, there will be more posts from Team Tiburon as they prepare for this event. Please contribute to their fundraising efforts for the New England Aquarium and share this post to spread the word. Catch up on their previous posts here.

This is the second in a series of bi-weekly posts from a team of Aquarium staff and supporters who are participating in an extreme obstacle course event called the Tough Mudder this spring. They will be posting about their training methods, animals that inspire them to work hard and they will be raising funds to support the Aquarium. You can help them out by donating to support their efforts.

Today’s blog post comes from Deb Bobek (left), Director of Visitor Experience for the Aquarium.  Deb’s lifelong passion for the ocean has grown even deeper since she’s worked at the Aquarium and become scuba and dry suit certified.  When she’s not busy making sure the Aquarium’s visitors are having a fun and educational experience, she can sometimes be seen doing a cleaning dive in the Giant Ocean Tank. 


Team Tiburon-ers are passionate about water and the animals in it. Even our team name is marine related. As noted in our previous post, “Tiburon” is Spanish for shark. So it was only natural that each of us picked a marine-related nickname to inspire us as we prepare for the Tough Mudder.

Our nicknames run the gamut. Some of us chose names that refer to large groups of animals such as, Elasmo for elasmobranch, the term used to refer to sharks, rays, and skates (i.e., the cartilaginous fishes) or Chrys, short for Chrysaora, a genus of sea jelly.


“Elasmo” with a sand tiger shark, a member of the Elasmobranch subclass.

Sand tiger sharks, like all Elasmobranchs, have skin made of dermal denticles (“skin teeth”), which give them the ability to glide quickly through water — an adaptation that would make all those Tough Mudder water challenges so much easier!

 
An Atlantic sea nettle (Chrysaora quinquecirrha).  Those long tentacles on the jellyfish sure would be useful in helping us get over those 9 foot walls.

Then we have those of us who chose an individual fish species for our name.  I chose Flame, for the flame angelfish, which is known for being a prolific jumper — a skill that would be useful for leaping over logs or through tires.


Centropyge loricula (Photo credit: Normann Z via Wikimedia Commons)

We also have Hawk, for hawkfish, which can perch on fire coral without feeling the sting. I think we all wish we had that protection against the Electroshock Therapy obstacle. 


Hawkfish (Paracirrhites forsteri) in Acropora grandis coral (Photo credit: Nick Hobgood via Wikimedia Commons)

Next we have Cuttle, for cuttlefish. Those eight arms would be useful for the cargo net climbs and monkey bars!

 
Cuttlefish (Photo credit:prilfish (Silke Baron) via Wikimedia Commons)

Our sixth Tiburon member is Lion, for lionfish, a well-known invasive species in the Atlantic. With few natural predators and venomous fin rays, lionfish are the definition of the kind of tough needed to complete the Tough Mudder.


Lionfish (photo credit: S. Cheng, New England Aquarium)

And that mud part?  Well of course we have Tiburon member Mudskipper, named for an amphibious fish that can actually walk on land as well as move through the water.  If you’ve know anything about the Tough Mudder, you know why the mudskipper provides excellent inspiration as we train!
  

Periophthalmus gracilis (Photo credit:Gianluca Polgar via Wikimedia Commons)

But, uh oh, none of us except Wolf, named for the Atlantic wolfish, has an animal that is specifically adapted to cold water (and with a nickname like Flame, I’m more likely to be comfortable in the fire obstacles than the cold water ones)!  In fact, wolfish produce a natural antifreeze to keep them moving and comfortable in cold water. But we don’t have that kind of protection! And the Tough Mudder promises to plunge us into icy cold water again, and again, and again, and...


Wolffish (photo credit)

So just as most of our namesake animals aren’t adapted for this kind of cold, we humans aren’t either, so Team Tiburon will compensate through training and preparation.  So how do we prepare for Tough Mudder, a challenge that’s sure to test the very limit of our cold tolerance?

Well of course, by facing it head on – literally!  Check it out as the team deliberately plunges into the frigid Atlantic Ocean on a 35 degree snowy day in February!   



And as you can see, despite our mostly tropically oriented alter-egos, it wasn’t so bad and we all came out smiling.


From left to right: Mudskipper, Chrys, Flame, Wolf, Cuttle, Lion, Elasmo and Hawk.  Is it just me, or does Wolf seem the happiest?

So that’s a little bit about our marine related inspiration as we train.  Keep following us as we prepare for the Tough Mudder challenge and if you would like to help us raise funds to support the Aquarium, click here.

~Flame

Stay tuned, there will be several more posts from Team Tiburon as they prepare for this event. Please contribute to their fundraising efforts for the New England Aquarium and share this post to spread the word. Catch up on their previous post here.