June 30, 2013 — By now, the aquarium staffers have become master animal movers, running something like an overland Noah’s Ark, as they return thousands of ocean creatures from their temporary home in Quincy to a newly renovated 200,000-gallon giant ocean tank.
The $17.3 million project began last fall. Gutting and renovating the tank, the aquarium’s central exhibit, required it to be empty for months, and they needed somewhere to put its residents.
So in 2010, the aquarium bought a brick warehouse in Fore River Shipyard and spent $6 million turning it into a temporary home for sea creatures, including reinforcing the foundation to hold a quarter-million pounds of water.
They then transported 800 tropical fish, four large sea turtles, a southern ray with a 4½ foot wingspan, four electric green moray eels, and 59 penguins down the road to Quincy. Though their aquarium habitat is outside the tank, the penguins don’t cotton to construction noise and dust.
The Animal Care Center, as they call it, is not flashy. It’s made for life support; the tanks look like they were built from an Erector set. Back at the downtown facility, the fish are accustomed to an elaborate underwater landscape. Here, inside the shark’s tank, the décor is limited to a bunch of those rubber strips that drag across your hood in a car wash. The strips are cheap and easy to clean and do a decent job of breaking up the monotony for the residents of the 6-foot-deep tank.
In addition to building five large holding tanks, they moved the aquarium’s marine mammal rescue operation to the facility. Last year, they cared for 242 rescued sea turtles, and the fact that the aquarium now owns this off-site facility increases its ability to build new collections.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe