Monterey Bay Aquarium Invites Los Gatos Girl to Feed Puffins Post Viral Video

After her YouTube puffin video went viral getting 283,688 hits, a Los Gatos girl was reunited with her new best friend Sunday at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Dakota, 9, was invited to formally visit the puffin and the other water birds at the facility a week ago by Geoff Drake, social media producer for the Aquarium, said mom Bobbi Jo Wood.


The Woods received an email invitation on Sept. 9, three days after her story went public after being published on Los Gatos Patch and being picked by all major national news organizations.

Drake asked if the family had an interest in returning as a facility's guest to allow Dakota to feed the puffins, Wood said.

The official face-to-face encounter took place at 10:15 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 15 when Dakota was taken to the facility by mom and older brother Joey.

After picking up their tickets in the will call area, Dakota met an Aquarium employee named Aimee, who takes care of the puffins, who took the family behind the scenes to see their enclosure.

"Dakota got her gloves on, had her boots sprayed and we went back around the front so we could watch and she went inside to feed the puffins," said Wood.

"Fairly quickly they were eating out of her hand ... there were several puffins in the tank," Wood added.

Dakota fed the birds mostly small fish, mom said.

Did the original puffin in the video interact with Dakota? Mom said she believes, or is hopeful, that the same puffin who followed her daughter across the tank back and forth in the original encounter on Aug. 18 was the same one who exhibited the same behavior on Sunday with the girl.

"You can see that in the [new] video. We believe, but we're not positive," mom noted. "They look a lot the same. She was excited about that. It felt like it remembered her."

Since the story broke on Los Gatos Patch, Wood said she's been contacted by media from Poland, England, Canada and all the major news outlets in the United States.

That includes NBC, ABC, CBS and even Diane Sawyer from World News Tonight.

"They asked for permission to use the video. They didn't actually interview Dakota," mom said of the latter media outlet.

NBC Bay Area News was the only outlet that asked for a personal interview with Dakota, mom added. "The rest of the media contacts were through email ... [reporters] requesting to use the video."

"She's been having a lot of fun with it," mom said of Dakota's new celebrity status. "Everywhere she goes somebody says, 'I saw your video, I saw your video.' She thinks that's very cool." 

Wood said she's happy she's raised awareness about the work of the Aquarium and support the facility is receiving as a result of the video she shot with her iPhone. 

Wood said although she's been contacted by many companies who want to purchase the video, she has not sold it. She said the Viral Spiral company and others like Viral Videos UK, Storyful, and others have wanted to partner with her on the video.

On Sunday, no media was present to capture Dakota's second encounter with the puffins, just Aquarium workers and her family.

Wood said she's posted the news on her Facebook page and made another video of Sunday's encounter with her iPhone and edited with iMovie. 

"She was in the enclosure for a little over five minutes, so off course that was a long time, I cut it down to a little over a minute," she said of the new video she's now posted on YouTube. 

Mom said all the publicity was a little crazy last week with constant emails coming in with requests to use the video, but she's enjoyed Dakota's excitement with the whole experience.

"One morning her principal [at Blossom Hill Elementary School] came into the classroom and stopped class and mentioned she had to come and say while she was getting ready for work that morning, Dakota came on the news and she was so excited. She thought that was neat," mom said.