My name is Matt Wandell and I'm a biologist here at the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of
Sciences.
And my role here at the aquarium is to take
care of animals.
And mostly I take care animals that are
found in tropical saltwater,
so in the coral reefs of the world. I
kinda love everything about my job.
It's really cool I get to scuba dive every day at work. I get to take
cool trips to places like the Philippines
I've always been fascinated by animals
and the ocean. And
this allows me to explore things like
that and get paid for it, so it's pretty
much an ideal dream job for me.
So the first thing in the morning I usually
head around do around all my tanks in
this or to make sure that everything's
copacetic and looking good. I take a look
at the animals, and I also take a look at the
equipment that
filters and make sure that the water is
all clean and healthy for the animals.
And then we usually do around a feeding.
To all my
fish and all my corals.
The aquarium is great. We have
a lot of good opportunities to go out on
the field. Usually we will go out there
sort of just to get an
idea of what the habitat looks like and
what we're trying to recreate here in
the Academy.
But we'll also do some collecting and what
that involves is usually
catching fish
and also harvesting a little tiny bit a
coral. Our responsibility after that
would be
taking care of and making sure that
those animals stay healthy
wherever we are until they get back to
San Francisco. Ever since
I was a little kid I just remember being
fascinated by animals
even just stuff in my own backyard you know, 
findings snails and watching what they do
and you know that just kind of followed me
into adulthood.
So I got my Bachelor of Sciences degree
in marine biology at UC Davis.
When I first went to UC Davis I was
expecting to be in genetics,
and then switched halfway through after
I realized that some of the classes were
tougher than I expected them to be. Then a marine biology major opened,
and it seems like kind of a perfect fit.
My advice to students that are
interested in this type of field
would definitely be to start getting
your foot in the door to public aquarium
by volunteering. So, I volunteered for
about a year and a half, and then a job
position opened up. A bunch people
applied and fortunately I had made an
impression
on everybody seeing me every week. And
you know I got the interview and I ended up just getting the job. And this is just
kind of a dream job for me I get to tinker.
I get to get my hands wet. I'm on my feet all
day. Pretty much
everything is cool about it.
