Pond scum in the face

I'm on my lunch break here at work at the good ol' shrimp research facility. We just got over a minor crisis. At about 11:00, I was outside looking for a coworker when I heard two huge booms accompanied by two puffs of smoke. Then Dr. Samocha started yelling at Chris to start the generator. Apparently the power went out. Well, the generator would not start. This means that all of the thousands of shrimp in the raceways were not getting any oxygen put into their water. Which means that they would die in a very short matter of time. So we spent the next 15 minutes running around looking for extension cords for the small generators. Then Tim gave me a pump with some sort of attachment that shoots out airated water. I put it in the water and was immediately blasted in the face with gross algae filled water. Tim said that the pump would lay down and spray the correct direction if I let go of it. So I did, and I got sprayed in the face with pond water again. Then I just held the nozzle down in the water so that it would put air bubbles in the water instead of spraying me in the face. The only problem is that the water is completely filled with thousands of shrimp, and they kept touching me, and everytime I got touched by one, my stupid jumpy reflexes would take over, and I'd let go of the pump and it would sit up in the water and spray me in the face AGAIN. We quickly rectified this problem by attaching a stick to the pump so I could use the stick to hold the pump in the water, thereby keeping the shrimp off my hands... or so I thought. A little later, I was holding the pump down in a different raceway, and one of my worst fears came true. I wish I had a picture of what the raceway looks like, but I'll try to explain it. Basically, I was sitting on a wooden plank that extends about 7 feet across the water. The raceways are really long and narrow, and they're enclosed with netting because shrimp like to jump, and if they jump out, they don't always make it back in the water. And sometimes, one shrimp will get all the other shrimp fired up, and they'll all start jumping out of the water at the same time. I've seen this happen before while I'm measuring water quality in the adjacent raceway, but I've never been in the enclosure when this happens. Until today. I was sitting on the plank in the middle of the raceway holding the pump in the water, and they all started jumping around and freaking out at the same time. I just covered my eyes and pulled my legs to my chest and pretended like nothing was happening. I could hear Dr. Samocha yelling at someone to shut the door because he was worried his shrimp would jump out. Tim was yelling "get her out of there!" like I was in a life-threatening situation. Anyway, it only lasted a couple of minutes, and then they all settled down. The power turned back on shortly thereafter. It's a good thing too, because if it had stayed off much longer, there's a good chance all the shrimp would have died.

Anyway... that's my shrimp story for the day. And here I was thinking today was going to be a boring day.