Celebrating Our Volunteers - Sue Long

In celebration of National Volunteer Month, we are focusing our blog posts on recognizing our incredible volunteers that make everything we do here at PTMSC possible. 

Sue Long has held numerous roles in her time here at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center. Beginning as a volunteer with our annual auction and the eelgrass re-planting project, she eventually realized she didn’t really know very much about marine life. So she decided to put herself out there and become an aquarium docent. 

Sue Long alongside another volunteer, Karen DeLorenzo, while helping with the annual Party on the Pier. 

Sue explained that this was a huge deal for her back then because the field of marine biology can seem overwhelming – it is definitely a huge field and there is so much to learn.

Hard at work drilling bones for Hope's articulation!

Sue really became involved with the skeleton articulation of Hope the orca. As a trained radiology tech, she just had to step in when the PTMSC was getting x-rays of Hope’s flippers. Sue knew how we could do it better, and she began what became a major role in the project. 

Sue’s favorite part of volunteering is working with such a wide variety of ages. As an aquarium docent, Sue especially loves when individuals with absolutely no background knowledge of the ocean come in. Just like she once was, these are people who don’t know much about the grand underwater world of the Salish Sea and are afraid of touching the animals. Sue gets to help change that.

Sue with fellow volunteer, Dana Africa, cleaning the baby abalone tanks.

Sue is always doing something for the PTMSC and she always has a wonderful smile on her face!

Written by Mandi Johnson, Volunteer Educator AmeriCorps Member