MARIN COUNTY, California (16 Nov 2005) -- The ill and injured animals each have their own medical chart. Seal pups are often tube-fed a high-fat liquid concoction to help nurse them back to health. They soak up the sun, recuperating in salt-water and fresh-water pens. Marine mammals, the sentinels of the ocean's health, attract scores of volunteers to the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. About 17,000 Bay Area students visit the center's rescued animals each year and learn about marine life. But the center has outgrown its deteriorating, 30-year-old facility, and on Thursday it broke ground on an $18 million facility in the Marin Headlands to house its hospital, research and education branches. The ceremony drew hundreds of guests, including dozens of volunteers and Lloyd Smalley, the center's retired founder, who started out three decades ago using bathtubs, children's wading pools, and chicken wire to create makeshift pens to treat stranded seals. "I couldn't be more pleased at what the center has done," Smalley said, "and what it's going to do." Since 1975, the center has treated more than 11,000 California sea lions, elephant seals, porpoises, whales, and sea otters rescued along the coastline from Mendocino County to San Luis Obispo County -- more than any other organization in the world. Volunteers and staff members have worked out of buildings composed of freight containers that were welded together. The pens are too small for the animals and not large enough for volunteers to maneuver safely around them. The water filtration system constantly breaks down. "The center has been patched and added to and cobbled together over 30 years," B.J. Griffin, the center's executive director, said in an interview. "We have learned over 30 years what works and what doesn't. "The new facility is going to open up great opportunities for expanding research, doing faster diagnostics and doing much more effective education," Griffin said. "This will bring the center into the prominence of being one of the leading teaching and research hospitals for marine mammals in the world." The modern facility will have expanded research capabilities, along with new pools, pens and a water filtration system designed to improve the treatment of pinnipeds. It will also have indoor and outdoor classrooms, exhibits, and observation areas that will introduce visitors to rarely observed aspects of animal care. The center will continue to rescue and treat marine mammals during the construction period. The new facility is expected to be completed by fall 2007. Public access to the hospital will be restricted, but visitors will be able to see animals being treated via a soon-to-be-installed Web cam at www.tmmc.org. So far, the center has raised $15 million for the project, aided by significant gifts from the late William Kimball, the Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation, and the Marin Community Foundation. The center is asking the public to fund the remaining $3 million needed. The center will be built on the 35,000-square-foot site of the current facility, a former Nike missile site within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The complex will consist of three one- and two-story buildings around a central courtyard. | | Since 1975, the center has treated more than 11,000 California sea lions, elephant seals, porpoises, whales, and sea otters rescued along the coastline from Mendocino County to San Luis Obispo County -- more than any other organization in the world. The new medical center will have a pharmacy, a chart room for medical records, a food preparation area for marine mammals, a laboratory, and a necropsy research area. Inverted bay windows will provide visitors a glimpse of the center's daily activities. The center rescues and treats about 500 animals a year, but nearly half die there. A necropsy is done on each dead animal, and tissue samples are preserved for the benefit of research scientists. "While these animals are in rehab, it's the best opportunity to find out what's going on -- to discover whether there are toxins in their systems," Griffin said. "It's so difficult to do any research on these animals in the wild. This presents a unique opportunity." A marine science community education center will be built near the pens at the current site. It will include an information desk for visitors, a classroom, a marine science discovery room with interpretive exhibits, and a retail store. The veterinary science and research building will house offices for staff and researchers who are studying diseases that affect marine mammals, a dispatch center for staff and volunteers who field calls and coordinate rescues of stranded animals, and a commons area for staff and volunteers. A courtyard and amphitheater will provide an area for visitors to learn more about the center's patients and the natural history of marine mammals. An observation deck on the second level will give the public a view of the pens. The center will include two dozen pools for pinnipeds, plus four tanks for animals with special needs. An existing portable pool for cetaceans such as harbor porpoises and dolphins will be replaced with a permanent tank. Modernized water treatment systems will nearly quadruple the center's water-holding and treatment capacity from 47,000 gallons to 160,000 gallons, while reducing its annual consumption of water. The water in each tank will be refreshed every 15 minutes. The project's "green design'' elements include skylights built into the roof of each building and photovoltaic shade panels built over the animal pens will convert the sun's energy into electrical power for the main buildings. "We started doing this (in the 1970s) as a humane response," Griffin said. "Since then, we have grown and enhanced our skills to the point where we can become a contributor to the world's knowledge of marine mammal disease. Hopefully, it will give us insights into the health of the oceans and the health of these populations." |
