- Good morning guys, I'm Jason Jones,

one of the associate curators here at the Georgia Aquarium.

Our doors are currently not open to the public

but we're gonna go behind-the-scenes and take a peek

and see how we're caring for our animals

while we're closed.

I'm right now about to walk into the building

but social distancing is one of the most important factors

as we have come to learn recently.

And so I'm going to be putting on my facemask

before interacting with any of the people.

One of our team members moms actually constructed

these face masks out of fabric and have given them to us.

So that's a really awesome way to

help protect ourselves and keep us safe.

We've divided our staff into two different teams,

a red team and a blue team

that enables us to work for several days in a row

without crossover and that's true

for all areas within the building.

- [Man With Glasses] Good morning, Jason.

How are you? - Good morning, good,

how are you? - Not too bad, all right.

- [Jason] Every day we get a wristband

and each day has a different corresponding color

so that all of the security knows

that we are here on the appropriate day

and where we're supposed to be.

I am now headed up to my office

and we are gonna check in and get ready for the day.

Oh good morning, Jen.

- [Jen] Good morning, Jason.

- [Jason] I am all checked in, so now

I'm just gonna pop on my boots

and we'll head downstairs and check in on the penguins.

So it looks like some of our trainers

are doing a quick session with some of our harbor seals.

Good morning guys.

- [Woman] Good morning.

- [Jason] How's it going?

- [Woman] So far, so good.

- [Jason] All right, time to go on downstairs

and check on the penguins.

Here we are at my home base,

right in front of our African penguin habitat.

While we have made some slight modifications,

it's business as usual for cleaning

and maintaining the habitat here at the Georgia Aquarium.

Hi Tamu.

I don't really think that the penguins notice too much.

We're still going out and interacting with them.

We're still feeding them a couple times a day.

We're still going out to the habitat and cleaning

so they may not notice as many people

out in the habitat, but in general,

I don't think that they notice too much of a difference.

Courtney, one of our trainers, is doing

an interactive enrichment session

where she is moving a bubble wand around

in an attempt to get some bubbles

for the penguins to interact with.

This is something that we as animal caretakers do

every single day.

We look for opportunities to engage with our animals,

find novel things that are different than the norm

and it's a really great way to provide

some mental stimulation and physical activity

for them as well

here at the Georgia Aquarium we have African penguins

and we've been really fortunate to partner with

SANCCOB which is an institution out in South Africa

where they rescue and rehabilitate

various seabirds, including African penguins.

So a couple of years ago I had the fortunate opportunity

to travel out there and do some chick bolstering

and work with their rescue penguins

before releasing them which was

a pretty awe-inspiring experience.

Right now we're headed into the back of our penguin habitat

so I can check on our little, they're not really

chicks anymore, our juvenile penguins

that hatched this year.

These guys are growing and changing really quickly.

We're noticing that there personalities

are starting to emerge.

Some of them are little bit more shy,

some of them are very outgoing,

they're all though very vocal.

They're still at the point where they're eating lots of food

and growing pretty quickly.

But they're getting close to full-grown size.

They grow from hatchling to the size right here

within three months.

Developing a strong relationship with the penguin

enables us to train them to let us

look at their wings or open up their mouths

or look at the bottoms of their feet,

touch them all over.

We built this relationship of trust

and so they allow us to do all these different things

and right now my relationship

is reinforcing enough for them.

So I don't have any fish to give her now,

but I can use this relationship as a way

to reinforce a reward for good behavior, huh?

Pretty unique family tree and we're excited

to watch them grow up.

All right guys, time to go check in on our adults.

Right now I'm stepping out onto

the African penguin habitat just to take a peek

and see what all of our adults are doing.

Most of them are just kinda hanging out.

Now the facemasks are something

that they're kinda getting use to.

We'll see if they react to them.

But Chiku seems pretty comfortable hanging out.

Even though we're closed to the public

it's still really important that we maintain the facility.

What are you doing, man?

Hi buddy, hi handsome.

This is Gibson, one of our rescued southern sea otters.

Working with the animal teams behind-the-scenes,

I don't often get the opportunity

to walk through the aquarium and see different aspects

in different galleries, particularly

when the public isn't here.

So I'm right now walking into our Ocean Voyager tunnel

and I get this awesome opportunity

to take a minute to myself and just zen out

amongst all these awesome creatures

that are swimming around me.

Hey Tank.

Tank is one of our green sea turtles

who is in our Ocean Voyager habitat.

I don't generally get the opportunity

to see him too often as I'm not down in the galleries,

usually working behind the scenes,

but it's a really awesome opportunity

for me to walk into a super quiet gallery

and just enjoy the serenity and peace that exists.

It's really sad that we don't have guests here

filling the space but for a minute or two

it's a pretty awesome opportunity for me.

So right now I'm walking into our Ocean Voyager gallery

right in front of our most iconic giant windowpane

that looks directly into this habitat

which is 6.3 million gallons of water

and has umpteen species of fish, whale sharks,

manta rays, spotted rays, but, I mean,

this is just unbelievable.

It really is a window into another world

and we're definitely excited to be able to

share this with you guys again in the future.

Right before I get back to work I'm stopping

at our tropical barrier reef habitat.

And this is a really good reminder for me

to let you guys know that a lot of your local

zoos and aquariums around the country

are also going through this troubled time

and they rely heavily on your support.

So we encourage you to reach out to them

or look onto their websites or Facebook pages

for more information about how you can contribute.