Marine biologist Ellie was drawn to her chosen field because she loves to learn - and knows there's always something new to discover about the ocean.
After nearly seven years at Sea Life, Manchester, including six on the animal care team, Ellie has found "no two days are the same", and still loves her work.
In this time, she's helped arrange a wedding for a pair of loved-up turtles, served up countless lunches for hungry sharks, and gotten to know and love the many, varied marine animals in her care.
I went behind the scenes with Ellie to find out more about what her day-to-day life looks like, and was very surprised to learn just how much food turtles actually chomp through in a day.
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Speaking with the Mirror, Ellie revealed: "There are things we do every day. So, for example, feeding the animals. Not everyone will get fed every day, but there are some animals, like seahorses, that get fed four times a day, for example."
According to Ellie, seahorses have tiny stomachs and so have to "eat constantly", unlike the aquarium's basking sharks who will only eat about once a week, despite their "eating machine" reputation.
I was asked to measure out one kilo worth of food each for resident green turtles, Ernie and Cammy, who are fond of leafy lettuce, seafood, and cauliflower. In the wild, they would feast on jellyfish for moisture, but here get a similar effect from a refreshing cucumber snack.
Giving some idea of exactly how much food the aquarium gets through in one day, Ellie added: "We on average go through around three kilos of veg a day, which doesn't seem a lot, but when it's out and chopped up, it is a lot.
"On an average day, we can go through over seven kilos of fish and krill and stuff like that. We're quite a small aquarium, so bigger aquariums will go through a lot more, like double what we do."
After a fair bit of chopping and dicing, it was time to get out on the feeding deck to sort lunches. The turtles are fed every day at 11 am and 3 pm, and apparently, they always know when it's time for some scram.
I found the deck to be quite a soothing place, although I was a bit afraid of tumbling in and becoming part of the sharks' meal. Turns out, my fears were overblown on this front.
Explaining how aquarists stay safe while working with sharks, Ellie said: "Sharks obviously have a bit of a bad reputation. Most shark species are actually very shy.
"Our sharks, for example, they're only young, but also they are obviously terrified of us. So we make sure we give them as much space as they need and they come absolutely nowhere near us."
As a non-professional, I wasn't allowed to feed the stingrays, which Ellie did while wearing a pair of protective gloves.
According to Ellie, the stingrays are very "polite" in nature, so much so that they often let their tank mates eat their food, while turtles Ernie and Cammy are the real bosses of the tank.
The pair tied the knot in a turtle ceremony complete with a broccoli cake, and it's clear Cammy wears the pants in the relationship, apparently even biting Ernie's tail as a show of dominance.
Ernie is Ellie's personal favourite, on account of his comedic and "quite cheeky" personality. One of the things that surprised her most about the job was just how varied the marine animals' personalities would be.
Reflecting on her favourite part of the job, Ellie said: "I enjoy getting to know the animals, that's really nice, especially when you're training them, and they learn something."
With all this feeding comes plenty of cleaning, but it isn't anywhere near as simple as rinsing out your fish tank at home and involves the aquarist diving or snorkeling in the tank using something called a siphon.
Ellie explained: "Literally, the best way to describe a syphon is that it's like an underwater hoover. It takes the sand, takes out all the dirt. So the syphon goes back on the floor and we take out all the dirt and we also scrub the rock work.
"So that looks nice and we can also take some of the dirt out from that and make sure the glass is clean. We also have lots of external filtration which will take the water, filter it, and put it back in again."
Considering some of the biggest misconceptions about working in an aquarium, Ellie warned that it wasn't all "just feeding animals all day."
She said: "I think one thing people really don't know we do is we're actually like plumbers as well. So all the water has to be kept inside all the tanks and all the filtration has to be maintained, and that's something that is part of my role as well.
"That's probably about half of my role, and I think people don't understand that. I also say to people who want to do this job, it is hard work."
Offering advice to those looking to follow in her footsteps, Ellie continued: "You have to be prepared to get dirty, and unfortunately, smell of fish when you go home. So it's not quite as glamorous as people think it is!"
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Do you have some interesting behind-the-scenes facts about your job? Email us at julia.banim@reachplc.com
