Twin brothers who spent their summers growing up at SeaWorld San Antonio are embracing their role as employees as the park celebrates its 60th anniversary.
Jakob Fenton and Westin Fenton are 23-year-old twins from San Antonio, Texas, who discovered a love for marine animals at a young age.
They first visited SeaWorld at the age of seven when their grandparents signed up the pair for a SeaWorld summer camp, they told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“They had a terrific camp program that just gives you a better understanding of everything that goes on,” said Westin Fenton.
“You learn about the animals while also making connections with people from all over the world — and [we] fell in love with it.”
After that first trip to SeaWorld, the Fenton brothers said they would visit the park every Sunday with their parents — with Jakob Fenton noting it was a huge component of their lives.
Year after year, the Fenton brothers attended a week of SeaWorld summer camp.
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“As soon as we started coming to camp [consistently], life didn’t look the same,” said Jakob Fenton.
There was always an interest, he added, in “wanting to come back. I would say our years revolved around that one week in the summer — it was like SeaWorld camp and then everything else leading up to it.”
At the camp, the Fenton brothers did everything from watching presentations and feeding dolphins to putting on wetsuits and — by their high school years — hopping into penguin habitats.
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By the time the brothers were deciding on their college paths and their courses of study, both Fenton boys chose the University of Texas at Austin with career paths that weren’t aligned to marine animals.
Westin Fenton said he enrolled as a music education major, but changed his path after the first year.
“Freshman year was our first summer working at SeaWorld, and it was really after that experience that I was like, ‘No, no, no, you messed up,’” he said.
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The siblings transferred to the University of Texas at San Antonio to be closer to the park where they said they saw themselves working there for the foreseeable future.
Jakob Fenton said, “Nothing has looked the same since” once the pair realized “this is what we were meant to do.”
Today, Westin Fenton works with the animal ambassador team as a senior zoological specialist. He cares for all of the animals “that call SeaWorld home,” along with assisting in community outreach.
Jakob Westin, for his part, is a senior zoological specialist at Orca Stadium within SeaWorld, working specifically with killer whales on a day-to-day basis.
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In this work, he uses proactive behavioral management with the animals to conduct exercise or health care sessions.
Westin Fenton reflected on his last decade-and-a-half at SeaWorld, saying it’s been a great journey.
“I couldn’t imagine my life without SeaWorld, and I think my only goal and my only hope right now is to give someone that feeling that I had as a kid,” he said.
“I’m just eternally grateful walking up to work … There’s always a big smile on my face because we’re truly living the dream we’ve always wanted and that’s special,” Jakob Frenton added.
This year, SeaWorld San Antonio is celebrating its 60th anniversary of assisting and protecting animals.
It’s the largest of the three parks in the SeaWorld chain owned and operated by United Parks & Resorts, according to the company’s website.
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