SciGirl Extraordinaire | Eden Maloney

Meet Eden Maloney. Eden volunteers twice a week at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California. We think she's the quintessential SciGirl!

Since 1975, the Marine Mammal Center has rescued and treated over 12,000 elephant seals, sea lions, sea otters, harbor seals, fur seals, dolphins, harbor porpoises and the like at its hospital facility. While the Center’s mission is to save as many animals as possible, sometimes their patients are too sick to recover. These animals play an extra special role. When doctors look inside them, they find clues and information about how they died and how they lived. This helps the docs understand how to prevent other deaths. Sometimes they can even use a former patient’s bones, teeth or organs to educate others about the importance of caring for these wonderful creatures.

Here's the deal: Eden volunteers in the specimen preparation lab. This particular task (one of the smelliest around!) entails preparing skulls, whiskers, pelts, and other parts for teaching and research. Eden’s dissects and cleans specimens, preserving the bones and putting them back together again -- no easy task. While many other youth volunteers choose to work in animal care or teaching, Eden chose specimen preparation over all other departments! No wonder we're so impressed!

Know any other great SciGirls like Eden? Tell us about them and we'll try to feature them on the blog and maybe even the TV show!