More Than Decoration: Pumpkins Provide Enrichment

November 6, 2026

Animal Care

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

This time of year, the Aquarium leans into the season hosting its annual Pumpkins & Piranhas event. We place lots of Halloween decorations through the space, and that includes sinking a few jack-o-lanterns into the habitats. While this adds to the ambiance, as it turns out, that’s just an added bonus. Their primary function is animal enrichment!

We sat down with McKenzie Deitrick, who’s been an aquarist here for the past three years, and an animal care enthusiast since middle school, to talk about why all these carved pumpkins provide much more than décor.

Enrichment is essential.
In the wild, an animal’s environment changes, constantly providing new things to experience. At the Aquarium, daily enrichment activities help encourage natural behavior all year round. Deitrick shared that re-arranging items in habitats helps shake up the animal’s routine. Placing a pumpkin in their habitats definitely shakes things up!

Fish like to play.

While some may associate playful behavior more with animals like dogs or cats, fish, do it too. This is typical behavior. The animals swim through rocks and find new paths to discover every day in their habitats. And, much like some dog breeds, some aquatic creatures need a job. Starfish especially are very active with enrichment. Giant Pacific octopus, who are used to cracking things open to get their food, appreciate having something to do, too.

Cautious curiosity wins the day.

In the wild, using caution keeps animals alive. Typically, it will take anywhere from a few hours up to a whole day before the animals go check out the newly added pumpkin. Some are quicker to investigate than others. For example, the octopus didn’t waste much time checking out the new feature, while the redhooks took a minute before swimming in for a nibble.

With all these benefits, it’s no wonder pumpkins get top billing in the annual Pumpkins & Piranhas event!

Small Animal Feedings

April 18, 2022

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

During Spring Discovery Days, Greater Cleveland Aquarium focuses on the little things. That’s why created a series of short “mealtime” videos featuring some of smaller residents.

In this one, Aquarist Bethany gives the Surinam toads one of their favorite treats . . . earthworms.

Here’s cellphone footage of Aquarist Seneca feeding an animal you might spot in Northeast Ohio parks . . . the yellow spotted salamander.

Sea stars eat in a way you might find odd. They extend their stomachs out of their mouths and envelop their food. Aquarist Katie fed a Bahama sea star and we sped up the video so you could watch this process. The food is partially digested externally, and eventually the sea star will pull its stomach back in through the mouth.

And here’s cellphone footage of Lando feeding frontosa, black piebald and daffodil cichlids.

Hungering for more? You never know what you’ll see when you visit the Aquarium.

–Curation

How & Why Do the Stingrays Paint?

November 23, 2020

Animal Care

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

The Greater Cleveland Aquarium has some unusual artists-in-residence . . . stingrays! Aquarist Laura B. shows you how the cownose #stingrays can create one-of-a-kind artwork and explains how activities like this allow the animals to exercise control over their environment and keep things interesting. #cleaquarium #natureiscurious

Hi! I’m Laura, an aquarist here at the Greater Cleveland Aquarium. I’m here at our Stingray Touchpool to talk about stingray enrichment. Enrichment is something we do to encourage natural behaviors. This enrichment can be simple like a touch stimulus in the touch tank, offering a new food item or allowing the animals to swim through hula hoops or air bubbles. Enrichment can also be something more complex, like a stingray art program or giving them an opportunity to work harder to obtain a reward.

Stingray art is something we do fairly often. It encourages the stingrays to work differently for their food and to use their natural foraging instincts. Enrichment allows the animals to exercise control and choice in their environment, which enhances their overall well-being. Animals with good mental health are more engaged with their surroundings and more at ease.

You can see that in this exhibit there are three types of stingrays. The most recognizable of those is the cownose stingray with its indented rostrum that kind of resembles a cow. The cownose rays stay higher in the water column and engage actively with the art program. There are also Southern stingrays, which are the larger ones, as well as a little, spade-shaped Atlantic ray who stays mainly on the bottom, buried in the sand.

You can see black shells in the exhibit. These are whole mussels. Stingrays can use their row of teeth to crush shells with their strong jaws. The cownose rays use the mandibles above their mouths to sift through the sand bed to find shells and food items. They’ll eventually get to those mussels, but they prefer the easier, handfed food options because it’s less work. That’s what makes mussels a good enrichment item.

Personally I really enjoy giving the stingrays enrichment because they interact with it readily and they always seem ready to participate. Before this stingray art session even began, the stingrays were gathering around, ready to paint their masterpiece.

Author: Laura B.

Food Prep @CLEAquarium: Shark Pole Feed

August 6, 2020

Animal Care

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

Sr. Aquarist Brenton M. shows you what and how we feed the sharks. (Stick with it and you can see another Shark Gallery resident snag a treat.)

Hi everyone! My name is Brent Maille. I’m the Senior Aquarist here at the Greater Cleveland Aquarium. Today we’re gonna talk a little bit about our shark feed. So we typically pole feed our sharks.

A lot of people can ask what we feed our sharks and what it kind of looks like and what the preparation for that is. Today we’re going to be feeding our sharks. We have actually prethawed some mackerel here

and typically for every shark feed we’ll feed between 18 and 20 pounds of fish. We rotate through a variety of fish, so some days we’ll use mackerel, herring, mullet, bonito and sometimes we’ll get in specialty food items like skate and different types of seasonal foods.

We try to recreate what they would be eating in the ocean as best as we can here at the Aquarium. In addition to that we can also do vitamin supplementation with our food here. The vitamins are small, little capsules we actually can then put inside of the fish before it’s fed out. Sometimes just like your pets at home or maybe even the kids, they don’t want to take the medicine, so we can sneak it in their favorite fish items and they eat it quite a bit better that way.

After our fish here is all thawed out we’re ready to feed it. We will then take it out to our feeding platform in the exhibit. Two aquarists will go out there, we’ll feed the sharks on the end of a big, long pole and typically even though we call it a shark feed, we’re not forcing the animals to eat.

We’ll offer it to them and our sharks have kind of picked up on the behaviors that when the pole is in the water and there’s fish on the end of it, that’s the time to come over and eat. That way they can kind of differentiate this food is intended for you. We typically don’t have any issues with them picking up on that idea and that way they’re not chasing after their tank mates and trying to think that they’re food.

Where to find @CLEAquarium: Shark Gallery

Author: Brenton M.

Watch Mallory Feed the Silver Screen Exhibit @CLEAquarium

July 31, 2020

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

See Mallory feed the “Silver Screen” jacks as the Greater Cleveland Aquarium aquarist shares information on schooling fish.

Hi! I’m Mallory. I’m one of the essential staff here at the Greater Cleveland Aquarium taking care of our animals and today I’m going to be showing you how we feed our Silver Screen exhibit.

So we have three different species of jacks in here. The lookdowns are the ones that you’re seeing the most of. They are kind of the flat-faced ones. We have our golden trevallies which are the yellow ones with the black stripes on them. And they’ll lose that yellow color as they get bigger and they can actually grow to be up to 4 feet, so they’re going to get quite a bit bigger. And then our third species of jack is our palometas which are the ones with the black fins. There’s only a couple of them in there and they’re pretty close to full-grown, so they’re going to stay about that size.

And all of those species of jacks can be found in the Atlantic Ocean. And then we do have our brownbanded bamboo shark that’s in here. They’re also sometimes called catsharks and that’s because they can have a whisker-like appendage in the front of their face so it helps them kind of feel things out.

Today we’re going to be feeding about three pounds of capelin. They get a variety of different fish. Today is capelin. Sometimes they’ll get herring and squid and all sorts of other saltwater fish.

This exhibit, our Silver Screen exhibit is kind of meant to show how schooling fish work. So schooling fish are going to be in big, large groups and that’s because there’s safety in numbers. If a predator were to come by it’s going to be a lot harder for that predator to pick off the fish versus just chasing down a fish that might be on its own.

One of the ways that schooling fish can do this is because they have something called a lateral line. That lateral line is directly connected to their nervous system and it’s a line that goes down the side of their body and it’s going to be very sensitive to any movement or pressure changes in the water. So as soon as the food hits the water or if there’s a predator nearby, the very first fish that’s going to sense that is going to move and then all of them are going to sense at the exact same time.

Where to find @CLEAquarium: Coastal Boardwalk Gallery

Author: Mallory H.

See Us Feed Lionfish and more @CLEAquarium

July 17, 2020

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

Aquarist Laura B. dishes on the appetites of lionfish, a dog-faced puffer and yellow blotch rabbitfish. #natureiscurious

Hi everybody! I’m Laura. I’m an aquarist here at the Greater Cleveland Aquarium. I’m one of the essential animal care staff and today we’re going to be feeding the lionfish exhibit.

So the lionfish that you’re seeing here are indiscriminate feeders so what that means is that they will eat anything that they can fit in their mouths. That makes them especially large of a problem because they are invasive and they do take over natural habitats by destroying everything that they come across because they will just eat it.

The pufferfish that you’re seeing here… he’s got those big front teeth that he can use to crush shells, so I’ll be feeding him a muscle. It is too big for the lionfish to eat. They’ll try but he’ll go down there to the the bottom and get it.

So the rabbitfish that you’re seeing here…he is an omnivore. He will eat plants and meat as well. So here we’ll be eating an herb gel today. It’s a type of mixture that we make with plants and proteins that we just mix up. It’s one of his favorites. It’s good for him to get a mixture of both so it gives him that well-balanced diet. He will also be getting a leaf of lettuce that he can kind of graze through. In the wild he would be grazing algae off of the structures that he comes across or off the reefs.

Where to find @CLEAquarium: Industry & Habitat Gallery

Author: Laura B.

Backyard Wildlife

May 16, 2017

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

Springtime, for many people, intuitively brings an awareness of renewal and life. The trees flower, the insects emerge, and of course baby wildlife is a wondrous sight. What can equal the rapture upon observing a baby deer take its first steps or a little bird learning to fly? People may come across baby animals in their backyards while clearing brush from last fall, when they begin to mow their lawns, or trimming trees and bushes. Sometimes, accidents happen and can leave wildlife injured or orphaned. Often, these people then want to then care for the animals and raise them. Although the intention is well-placed, most people do not have the information or resources to accomplish this properly and for the optimal health of the animals. This is where wildlife rehabilitators come in.

A wildlife rehabilitator is a person who has acquired the knowledge and permits, and understands the commitment involved in caring for an orphaned or injured animal. In Ohio, it is actually illegal to rear wildlife without a permit. This is for the protection of not only the wildlife, but also the people who wish to help. Wildlife can carry bacteria and viruses that are harmful to people; these types of illnesses are called zoonotic diseases. The wildlife rehabilitator would have gone through training to be able to identify the symptoms of such diseases and can take measures to protect oneself and provide the proper care for the animal.

Further, baby animals require highly specific diets vital to their growth and development. Cow’s milk from the store is not even a close substitute for most of the wildlife a person would come across. Just imagine the tiny bones of a squirrel and the functionality they provide that animal when dashing through the trees. The ingredients in cow milk are simply not suited for helping form those little skeletons. Likewise, feeding worms to a baby bird whose diet should consist of mostly seed is not only detrimental to its growth, but often fatal. An animal that is fed the wrong diet will quite frankly starve to death because it is not getting the nutrients required for its species. Wildlife rehabilitators have the permits, education, and experience to provide the proper care for an animal that needs help.

Conversely, many times a baby animal is found, it is not in need of human assistance. Many times the animal is healthy, but the parents are away finding food or deterring predators. No person educated or otherwise can provide the equivalent care that a mother can. It is always best to try to reunite with the parents before attempting to bring that animal into a captive environment. If the animal is injured or the parents are known to be dead, that of course would invite human help. When capturing an animal in need of assistance, personal safety should always be the priority. Animal will bite, no matter how cute they appear. Once the animal is captured, it should be placed in a dark, quiet place until it can be transported to the nearest wildlife rehabilitator, which should happen as soon as possible. The animal should not receive any food or water! Depending on the animal and what circumstances led to the need for assistance, this can be dangerous. An animal whose body temperature has dropped below normal, for example, can die if given food or water to try to digest in addition to trying to bring its temperature back up. This simply places too much stress on the body and it will shut down. The animal must be taken to the nearest wildlife rehabilitator as soon as possible to legally receive the proper diet and medical care.

Why would the Greater Cleveland Aquarium, which has fish, care about local wildlife, you may ask. The Greater Cleveland Aquarium, as a conservation organization, takes an interest in this topic because it is a conservation and stewardship issue. GCA has some animals in its care that were rescues and required a permanent home. We strive to provide the best care for the animals for which we are responsible, and wish to see the same for any species. Remember to find a licensed wildlife rehabilitator if you come across an animal in need. Please do not attempt to raise the animal on your own. It is difficult, not to mention illegal, to do so.

Pups With a Purpose

March 7, 2017

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

Here’s How Fur and Fins Come Together at the Aquarium

Canine Companions for Independence provides highly trained assistance dogs to enhance the lives of people with disabilities. Yesterday the Northern Ohio Chapter visited the Greater Cleveland Aquarium with 8 dogs in training.

The organization, founded in 1975 and based in California, breeds, raises and trains dogs that, according to its website, are matched with adults, children or veterans with a disabilities, or professionals assisting clients with special needs. As you can see in these photos, must pups are a Labrador/Golden Retriever crossbreed.

During their visit, volunteers started by working on basic commands. After 24 months of training, these dogs will be able to respond to 30-40 commands ranging from “sit” to “vertical” (used eventually to turn wall light switches on or off).

The volunteer group, consisting of 10-15 active members in Northeast Ohio, meets twice a month and expose the future service dogs to being in active, populated spaces. The canines in training try out different modes of transportation and explore attractions from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to the Great Lakes Science Center.

“Any place you can think of, they go,” Staicey Scholtz, Volunteer Chapter President. “The [West Side] Market is a great chance for training not only because of the crowd, but because of the smell. In service these dogs will visit various market settings and the odors can be a lot for them.”

The process doesn’t end after their training in Cleveland. Service dogs receive another 6-8 months of professional training, where more specific commands are taught geared toward the need of those on the 1-3-year waitlist. After a 2-week team training where those in need of a service dog meet their partner, a graduation ceremony marks the official “handing over of the leash.”

Canine Companions for Independence is the longest and oldest service dog organization, placing approximately 400 dogs a year, free of charge.

“It’s so great to know you’re making such a difference for someone,” added Scholtz. “That’s the goal and it’s the best part of the whole process.”

Endangered Species

July 25, 2016

Written by Greater Cleveland Aquarium

What exactly does endangered mean? You often hear species described as “endangered” but what does that imply? When an animal is deemed “endangered”, it means that species is likely to become extinct if changes in the conservation strategy are not altered. The term endangered is one of many classifications on the Red List created by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This list is the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of thousands of biological species and is used to assess their extinction risk.

This figure shows the relationships of the different classifications of the IUCN Red List *EX-Extinct, EW-Extinct in the wild, CR- Critically endangered, EN- Endangered, VU-Vulnerable, NT- Not Threatened, LC-Least Concern

According to the 2015 Red List, 3,801 animals are listed as endangered. Species at higher risk are classified as critically endangered which is only one step below extinct in the wild. There are 2,542 animals in this critically endangered category. 5,639 animals are classified as vulnerable; this means that these species will likely become endangered unless the circumstances threatening their survival improve.

As you walk through the Greater Cleveland Aquarium you can spot some of these threatened species. In the Ohio Lakes and Rivers Gallery, you will find our spotted turtle (endangered) and shovelnose sturgeon (vulnerable). As you make your way through our ocean exhibit your eyes will be drawn up towards some of our largest residents, our sand tiger and sandbar sharks, both of which are classified as vulnerable.

There’s also another very important species in the exhibit: the critically endangered goliath grouper.

You’ll likely find this fish in the very front of the exhibit, often tucked between a few of our nurse sharks. This impressive fish can grow to be 8 feet in length and weigh up to 800 lbs. Naturally residing in shallow, tropical waters along the Atlantic coast this fish was often sought after by fishermen. Their fearless nature made them especially easy prey for spear fishermen. Unfortunately, due to their large size, slow growth and reproductive rate these fish are very susceptible to overfishing. This has led to severe population declines, classifying them as critically endangered.

Goliath groupers are now protected from harvest: if you catch one it must be released immediately. These sanctions set in place are beginning to positively impact the grouper populations. There are many other ways you can help threatened species like the goliath grouper:

Recycle! A lot of trash ends up in our lakes, rivers, and oceans. This is very bad for the organisms that call these places home. By keeping trash out of these areas, species will have a better environment to thrive in! (The GCA hosts beach cleanups throughout the year!)
Fish responsibly and support responsible fishing methods! Millions of tons of marine species are caught each year as bycatch. Sometimes this bycatch significantly outweighs the intentional catch. This poses a serious threat to many marine species including dolphins, whales, sharks, and turtles.
Actively support legislation to prevent overfishing. Many species are now threatened due to overfishing and irresponsible fishing methods. Help support regulations to protect marine species!