There is a certain peace at the bottom of 120,000 gallons of saltwater. As Dana MacCallumMhor sinks under the surface, the world fills with the soft rumble of far-off filters, punctuated only by rattling bubbles and the hypnotic hiss of her regulator. It’s a serene space.
It’s easy to lose yourself here. Before long, Benson, one of two green sea turtles in the tank, swims over to say hello. Most of the creatures keep their distance. The turtles, not so much. “They remind me of cats,” says MacCallumMhor. “The turtles are always really interested in us. They’re curious.”
This is the best part of MacCallumMhor’s week. At 76 degrees, the water is cooler than it seems. Even in her wetsuit, that initial plunge is a shock — a great chaser to the two cups of coffee she had for breakfast. Staff always dive in pairs, but nearly the whole team is engaged. One person stays up top, a liminal lair with salt-stained rafters and backstage lighting. Another watches from the gallery below. They communicate with hand signals and walkie-talkies.
Sea Life Michigan in Auburn Hills is the largest aquarium in the state. The main attraction is the tropical ocean exhibit, home to over 500 creatures — everything from Benson and Carr, the two sea turtles, to nurse sharks, stingrays and more. Inside the tank, MacCallumMhor has a job to do: scrubbing hardscapes, wiping the acrylic and checking the animals for injury. When the hour-long dive clock expires, she surfaces, ready to talk.
MacCallumMhor is a soft-spoken 25-year-old, already nearing four years on the job after graduating from Michigan State University in 2022 with a degree in fisheries and wildlife. She has a deep passion for animals and the environment and exudes a sense of never-ending wonder. It’s not lost on her that what she does is fantastical and rare, especially in Michigan.
“This is the coolest job in the world,” she says. “I never saw myself being lucky enough to do this and make it a career. It’s extremely competitive across the aquarium industry, and these jobs are very limited in Michigan.”
Sea Life employs not just one, but two graduates from Michigan State. Lauren Grauer has been there nearly since the aquarium first opened in 2015. Fresh out of MSU with a degree in zoology, she started as a part-time husbandry assistant, moving to a full-time aquarist, then senior aquarist, and now curator since late 2022.
“I never thought I would get to stay in Michigan,” says Grauer. “There wasn’t a lot of work for me here. I assumed I would have to move, but Sea Life opened the same year I graduated, so it was perfect.”
Grauer has a disarmingly endearing love for her work. She speaks about both the people and the creatures under her care with warmth. The small details matter: she quizzes her team on the Latin names of animals to reinforce connections between seemingly unrelated creatures. Her favorite is turbo petholatus — snails. “They’re just so weird,” she says. “They’re cleaner-upper animals. They eat the problematic algae you can’t scrub off. And they’re just cute.”
For many, even with experience, a job like this, in a place like this, can feel a little more than fantasy. For MacCallumMhor and Grauer, it once did. Michigan State made it possible.
The ecological inclination
There she stood, in knee-deep water, chest waders and rubber boots holding back the Red Cedar as it cut through the heart of MSU’s campus. It was her turn. MacCallumMhor stepped forward, lifting from the river a smallmouth bass caught by electrofishing.
Electrofishing is introduced early in the fisheries and wildlife program. Using a mild current, fish are temporarily stunned, allowing researchers to collect data before releasing them.
Three weeks earlier, MacCallumMhor had arrived on campus carrying the familiar anxiety of a first-year student, still half uncertain that she was in the right place, doing the right thing. Now, she was standing in a river, holding a fish . . . and she was in class.
“I just remember thinking: this is what I want to do,” she says. “And that was just one of my classes. In that moment, I felt so lucky to have that confirmation of what I was doing.”
Growing up, MacCallumMhor’s parents were not overly outdoorsy, though that didn’t stop her. Her connection to the natural world blossomed in bits, swimming in the Great Lakes, sleeping under the stars. As she grew, so did her concern — it needed to be protected, and she needed to do it.
At MSU, she joined the Residential Initiative on the Study of the Environment, or RISE. The living-learning community, with its focus on the environment and sustainability, was a perfect fit. When she met RISE students in the fisheries and wildlife program, she started to see herself there, too.
For MacCallumMhor, the experiential learning that took place in RISE was the key. From the greenhouses of RISE to pinning insects in entomology or midnight fishing in Sault Ste. Marie, she thrived with a tactile education.
And it started with a smallmouth bass in the Red Cedar her first month on campus.
“That’s one of my favorite parts of MSU because all my classes were like that,” MacCallumMhor says. “Anyone can learn anything on paper or through lectures but seeing it all in real life helps make those connections. Getting hands-on experiences makes it a lot more valuable.”
The talent triangulation
Grauer arrived at Fort Custer Recreation Area just before sunset and collected her telemetry kit. Moving carefully through the wild margins of Eagle Lake, she scanned for a signal that meant an Eastern box turtle was nearby.
Her first time using the equipment, Grauer found just one turtle in six hours. But she was getting better. Over the next four hours, she located six. For each, she recorded the turtle’s behavior and surroundings along with location and weather data.
It was the summer of 2014 and, in less than a year, this area would be reduced to a charred landscape in a prescribed burn experiment. Grauer’s work as a student intern in the months leading up helped MSU researchers understand turtle movement and protect populations.
“I never thought I would even consider being a field biologist in the future,” Grauer later wrote in a paper about the internship, “but after this experience, I’d jump back in my boots and get them dirty again.”
By then, Grauer was heading into her senior year at MSU, having chosen a major just a year earlier. She had switched from preveterinary to nursing, briefly considered journalism, and then found herself caught between zoology and engineering. Zoology won.
Her internships helped sharpen her focus. A summer at an Ohio wildlife park introduced her to working with large mammals, but it didn’t quite stick. Fieldwork with box turtles did. The next summer, she combined the best of both worlds, working with reptiles and amphibians at the Virginia Aquarium.
Grauer left MSU with a strong direction and important insight from Integrative Biology Professor Richard Snider, who helped build the College of Natural Science internship program and took pride in MSU’s ability to help students land competitive careers. He pushed Grauer to see the field clearly. It wasn’t enough to be interested; she needed to be ready.
“Without him, I don’t think I would have had the concept of how competitive this was and how much work I needed to do to get into the field,” Grauer says. “Make friends with your professors and advisors. Talk to people doing the job you want. A lot of it is getting your foot in the door, gaining experience and knowing what it takes to get there.”
The conversation manifestation
Grauer was 5 years old when she first visited SeaWorld. At that age, memory is malleable, easily blurred or reshaped, but certain moments take hold. For Grauer, that was a core experience. For everything she’s forgotten about that trip, she remembers one thing: the orcas. “I cared a lot about orcas after that,” she says.
It’s something she sees every day at Sea Life. When children round the corner into the tropical ocean habitat, it’s often Carr, the green sea turtle, they see first, wedged into his resting spot beside an ornate mermaid head. Kids press in close, squealing at the chance to be just inches away.
“It gets me every time,” Grauer says. “They’re going to care about sea turtles a lot more now. The work we do is important. It gives people a chance to experience animals they wouldn’t see otherwise and, hopefully, care about protecting them.”
For both Grauer and MacCallumMhor, nothing makes the job more special than meeting a child eager to talk about what they’ve seen. In those moments, they see themselves at that age — precocious, excited, ready to make a difference — just waiting to be activated.
“The kids I meet here are like mini-marine biologists,” says MacCallumMhor. “They ask questions nobody else asks. I love hearing those passionate questions from a kid so interested in this work and being able to answer them.
“Michigan State really helped prepare me for this. Without the hands-on experiences, without putting myself out there and making connections, I wouldn’t have found this career — the one I used to dream about.”
This piece was adapted from a piece in Spartan magazine. Read the full story.
