Growing up in Long Island, N.Y., Julia Petersen was always around the water. A native of East Quogue, located on the south fork of Southhampton, she could walk to the Atlantic Ocean and often brought home natural treasures from her beach walks.
A 2018 graduate of Stony Brook University, Petersen, 30, is now Marine Discovery Center’s aquarist and intern coordinator. You might see her figuring out issues with the center’s exhibit tanks or guiding student interns with animal care.
Get to know Julia in her interview with MDC staff writer Lisa D. Mickey:
What were your hobbies growing up in Long Island?
I was always outside and I was definitely a bug and animal kid. I had a little hospital for bees. I grew up in a small neighborhood and there would be horseshoe crabs in our bay. I also had a little aquarium at home. I’d take some of the water from the bay and bring it home with me. There was plenty there to be entertained by.
Did you have any early influences?
My experience with marine biology at Westhampton Beach High School was foundational for me. We had a marine biology and an environmental science lab. I took both classes with the same teacher, Mr. Jok Kommer. He was a mentor for me and a great science communicator who treated us like adults in a way that made us want to act like adults. We had so many aquariums, all plumbed together, and he would assign students two tanks to take care of, which is what I do with MDC interns now. That gave us a real ownership of what we were doing and learning about the animals. The name of the lab was Oikos, which means home. That classroom really was a home for me and I see so much of the stuff that he taught being relevant here, which feels like a full-circle moment.
Why did you stay in Long Island to go to college?
One reason was my dog. I got her when I was 16, so I went to Suffolk County Community College for my first two years before going to Stony Brook. I knew I wanted to do something with animals, wildlife or conservation.
You worked as a veterinary assistant during high school and college. What did you do there?
It was a small-animal practice and we did general care for domestic animals, such as cats, dogs and sometimes bunnies or birds. I considered veterinary science as a career. That was the perfect spot for me to work during the summers and I was there for six years, starting as a kennel attendant. By the end of my time there, I was the manager. I learned from that experience it was not what I wanted to do in my career.
When did you move to Florida?
I left my job at the animal hospital in 2020, and moved to Florida the next week. My dog came with me.
What were your college internships?
My two main internships were during college. I worked with Global FinPrint [which studies sharks, rays and other marine life on coral reefs]. They use what are called BRUVs — Baited Remote Underwater Video surveys — deploying baited cameras at different reefs. They record video footage and need interns to watch hours and hours of footage to document everything we see. We were primarily looking for shark and ray species. It was a flexible, remote internship for me. The second internship was with Peterson Marine Ecology Laboratory, no relation.
What and where was that?
That was in Southampton on Long Island. Stony Brook has a Southampton campus that is their marine biology hub with a really incredible lab. That was a paid internship over the summer where I was a research assistant for their graduate students.
What happened after college?
After I moved to Florida in January 2020, I did the volunteer orientation at both Marine Discovery Center and at Marine Science Center because I wanted to get my foot in the door and meet people. One week after both of those orientations, COVID shut everything down. It was a really tough time to move away from home and be in a new place unemployed. I ended up working remotely for one year for a nonprofit called “Dogs Playing for Life.” As an executive assistant, I helped coordinate all of the travel and worked with their grant contracts. That organization travels to different animal shelters throughout the country and trains shelter staff how to lead playgroups. So, rather than each volunteer taking one dog out at a time, they have big play yards where they bring dogs out and pair them up, based on play style. They have done really cool research on lowering stress levels in animal shelters, giving shelters more tools regarding the personality of dogs. Ideally, adopters are not seeing a dog that’s scared and barking in a kennel. They’re seeing one that is the play-group superstar.
When did you get involved with the AmeriCorps program?
While I was working with “Dogs Playing for Life,” I knew that sitting at a computer, booking flights and planning travel was not going to be my forever job. I applied for a service term with AmeriCorps in its Florida Conservation Corps program called A.N.T. (AmeriCorps Nonnative Plant Terminators). The pay was $1,300 a month, but it was about getting experience.
Where did you go to do your service?
My 11-month service was stationed at Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach, and the surrounding Bulow Creek, Bulow Plantation, Haw Creek Preserve State Park and Addison Blockhouse Historic State Park. Those are the main parks that are managed in that area.
What was your role with the AmeriCorps job?
Long Island is a coastal ecosystem, but I didn’t know a lot about Florida ecosystems. I had no idea which plants were native or invasive. Prescribed fire is something that does happen on Long Island, but is not nearly as big as it is here in Florida. So, I went into this job a little bit naïve, but I ended up loving it. We worked in resource management and it was me and my co-worker. We were trained, told everything we had to do, were given the keys to a Kubota, and off we went. We learned how to use chainsaws, drive trucks and trailers, and go out to work on prescribed fires together.
What happened after you had completed your service term?
Our service term in 2022 was ending, but the district park staff — who we had worked with quite a bit — found the funding to create two contract positions at the park for us to continue doing invasive plant removal and prescribed fire. So, we basically got to keep doing what we were doing through 2023, but as park staff.
How did you end up at Marine Discovery Center?
My grandma lives in New Smyrna, so when I was talking about moving here, she told me about MDC. And while I was an AmeriCorps worker, they paid for us to take a Florida Master Naturalist Program class, so that’s where I met [MDC Executive Director] Chad [Truxall] during the Wildlife Habitat Evaluation class that he taught. I very nervously asked Chad if any positions opened, I would love to be considered. He told me they were looking for grant-funded restoration positions. By the summer of 2023, MDC reached back out and asked if I was still interested in the position? And I absolutely was!
Didn’t you work with the Shuck & Share program through MDC’s conservation program?
Yes, my first year at MDC was a grant. I was in charge of Shuck & Share and made conservation units like BESE mats and oyster volcanoes.
Oysters are prevalent in Long Island, so did that kind of bring you back home a bit?
Yeah, what brought me to MDC in a lot of ways, was there were so many things about the Florida ecosystem that were super familiar to me. As much as I love upland work, what happens here in the coastal system feels very homey to me. We face a lot of the same issues here as we do up north with seagrass die-off. We did seagrass research during my internship with the Peterson Lab, along with shellfish issues, urban runoff and algal blooms. There are so many things that are exactly the same here. Getting involved here in 2023 definitely felt like I was back in college, doing hands-on things.
You shifted into MDC’s aquarist’s role in 2024, while also working as the center’s internship coordinator. How do you move from conservation to now caring for animals and finding students for internships?
The timing worked out because my grant was coming to an end, and honestly, I have the animal background from all of my time in veterinary care. I’ve had a range of strange and odd pets and things I’ve fostered throughout the years, such as chinchillas, geckos and snakes. I have fostered 20 or so chinchillas. I think everyone in my family thought I would have a lot more pets by now, so, the fact that I have a bunch of animals here at work in my care makes a lot of sense to them.
Is it daunting to know that you’re in charge of animal health and well-being at MDC?
Yes, it was daunting in some ways because I have taken on something that is so front and center at MDC. Many times, I am learning in front of everybody and that can be really intimidating. It was a leap of faith because it’s very different than what I had been doing. I love conservation work, but I was very excited by the chance to get more involved in a different way.
Has your veterinary experience helped you in this role?
I think so, but I’ve learned things like what type of protocols can be used to improve different systems, such as quarantine systems and day-to-day normal upkeep. With these animals, it’s always something and it doesn’t always have a happy ending. We should be responsible stewards and we should have protocols in place, but at the end of the day, there is only so much you can do. That becomes even more true once you get into fish and reptiles, which show very few signs that something is wrong until it’s already far too late to do anything. That’s definitely the hardest part of the job. Sometimes, the balance between what’s right for the animal is not always what’s right for the people and that can be really tough.
What have been the biggest challenges in this role, especially as MDC plans for future expansion?
Everything I think of that’s a challenge, it’s there for a good reason. Managing expectations is because people care. There are high expectations because we all want animals to be doing well. We want cool things to see, but I have to consider the balance for the animals. Andie [a resident MDC snake] wants to hide in the mulch. Does that work great as an exhibit where people look and the exhibit is empty? No, but would it be humane for us to take away the mulch just for guests to see Andie? That’s a challenge I think anyone in animal care has experienced. Sometimes we have animals that would be amazing to keep on exhibit, but they would not do well here. So those decisions can be pretty hard.
You got very excited when the nudibranchs started having babies!
They’re just so cool. I had never seen a nudibranch [sea slug] until recently. We were able to see them, their eggs and then look under a microscope and see their larvae. And, the nudibranchs also eat something that’s a pest in our tanks called Aiptasia. It was a win-win that this really cool creature is a little invasive-species hunter.
What’s been the greatest reward so far?
Our internship program and working with the interns has been extremely rewarding. I took over that responsibility last year and I think we’ve already had 30 interns. There have always been interns at MDC, but it was more informal or on a case-by-case basis. One of the previous interns, Zoe Stuckwisch, wanted to come back to MDC. She was doing aquarist duties before I got here, so we built a really incredible working relationship where she taught me a lot. I also gave her freedom to try things that she was interested in learning. I had already been thinking about how MDC could be such an amazing support system to early-career individuals and people in college who needed experience. It was really important to make it an accessible experience for others here at MDC. Many internships require a 40-hour time commitment, but who can do that while also trying to go to school? I wanted to provide something that would be beneficial for them while acknowledge that they’re trying to balance other things.
There must be a lot of applications for internships at MDC.
We look at the applications, call students in for interviews and make selections. We fit the applicants with our needs. We saw that conservation could use some help and education always needs a hand. It grew from exhibit interns to each of our departments having their own intern teams. And now, we are getting more applications than we could ever manage! It’s a great problem to have. I wish I could give everyone that experience. We also have interns who want to stay and that is so valuable to me because the longer they stay, the more they get involved with other things here that maybe they didn’t expect to experience.
It seems that you have helped MDC’s internship program evolve.
Working with students and supporting the next generation of environmental professionals is so important to me. I am a huge proponent of trying to find pay for our interns. They have to get here and not all of them live close. Some are commuting from Rollins College or from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. They have to pay for gas to get here. They are not paid internships right now, but down the road, that’s something that is a huge goal for me. I can offer them schedule flexibility and any opportunity that we can give them to learn. We are currently offering about 11 college internships per semester.
What makes you most proud of your work at MDC?
I’m very proud of the intern program as a whole. It has contributed to all of the improvements that we’ve seen with our exhibits at MDC. I’m super proud of the outdoor exhibits that we made for our turtles. I could not have done that if I didn’t have intern support. Our new exhibit tanks have been a huge challenge and our largest 400-gallon tank in the exhibit area sprung a leak. Then we transformed one large tank into three tanks that really highlight our conservation work. But as the aquarist, it’s not just about taking care of the animals. You have to learn plumbing, water quality and electrical stuff. A lot of things pop up and you have to figure it out. Stuff happens, but I have learned, that’s just part of it.
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