Water Reaches The New Hospital

Last week marked a very important milestone for the new marine animal hospital at the National Marine Life Center. With the help of Waterlife Design Group, Village Plumbing,  W.W. Reich Construction,  and past facilities coordinator Brian Moore we pumped water from the pump house to the new hospital building for the first time.

Our first two sea turtle tanks are now filled with sea water from the Cape Cod Canal. Once in the tank the seawater becomes part of a closed loop filtration system. The water is pumped upstairs to the hospital filtration room where each system has mechanical, biological, and chemical filtration components to clean the water. The water within one system is kept completely separate from the other systems to ensure no cross contamination takes place.

We now face a few new challenges in getting all our pumps from the previous hospital building up and running again. We will then install ozone to these first two systems as the final filtration component. Ozone is used to kill harmful organisms in the water such as bacteria and viruses.

We are excited to have our first two pools filled with water! We are getting closer and closer to admitting our first patients into the new building everyday! To learn more about the new animal hospital, stop by and visit our Marine Animal Discovery Center. We are open everyday this week (February 19th-25th) from 10am-5pm. Click to learn more about the educational programs being offered this week.