Inside the National Aquarium Animal Care and Rescue Center
BALTIMORE, Md. (WHTM) The National Aquarium in Baltimore draws over a million visitors to the city’s Inner Harbor every year. People from all over the world come to see the exhibits, learn more about the ocean world, and maybe forge a stronger connection to the sea around us. But the main aquarium building along East Pratt Street is just one part of their operation.
A few blocks away on East Fayette Street is the aquarium’s Animal Care and Rescue Center. The 56,339-square-foot facility opened in May 2018. Ashleigh Clews, the Curator of ACRC, tells us the building serves many functions.
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“In addition to building habitats here and acquiring animals for our beautiful exhibits at the main building, we also do quite a bit of seal rehab and rescue from this building.”
One of the most unusual aspects of this building – you can visit it.
“And that’s what’s unique about this off-site,” says Ashleigh. “While other aquariums do have them, many of them are not open for public touring. We are on the weekends, and they’re small tours and get really, really intimate with the animals and the animal holding room and learn about the different kinds of species and how to test water quality and all sorts of fun facts.”
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(We should note you have to make reservations in advance to take the tour.)
The first thing you see when you walk through the door is the fabrication facility. Here they build the displays you see at the aquarium habitats. Almost all the background things you see in the exhibit tanks from rocks to corals to sponges, even vegetation and sunken logs, are crafted here.
Next stop, the holding areas for new arrivals. The center has multiple rooms with many tanks of different sizes.
“We see everything from tiny little Cardinal Tetras, all the way to big sand tiger sharks. So we see all shapes and sizes fish, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians,” explains Ashleigh. “When they get here, we acclimate them to their new environment. We have many, many different types of tanks and saltwater, freshwater, cold water, anything that we would need.”
It’s a bit impractical to pipe in seawater from the Atlantic Ocean. (The nearest ocean beach is about 95 miles away.) So they make their own.
“We use city water and filter it and filter it and filter it,” says Asheigh, “And then add many different kinds of salts to make that as close to natural seawater as possible. We make close to 10,000 gallons a month just in this building.”
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Another part of the building holds the seal rescue part of the center. Seal rescue season typically lasts from the early winter through May. When we were there, they had just admitted their first rescue of the year, a baby gray seal they’ve named “Selkie”.
“Selkie was found in Lewes, Delaware,” explains Senior Rehabilitation Biologist Margot Madden. “She is deemed a maternally dependent pup, meaning she was a failure to thrive, that mom and her separated prematurely.”
The best estimates are Selkie was probably only a week old when she and her mother got separated.
The little seal doesn’t seem to have any infections but is a little malnourished. Getting Selkie’s weight up to a healthy level is just one of the challenges facing the rescue staff. “We are now teaching her how to be essentially a seal, teaching her how to swim, teaching her how to eat.” says Margot.
They also rescue sea turtles- a lot of them. They’re not at the ACRC building; instead, they recuperate in a quiet area of the main aquarium. Sorry, no visitors – the rehabbers don’t want the turtles to get used to humans.
“We have several sea turtle species that are undergoing rehabilitation for the purpose of going back out into their natural environment and continuing their species,” says Jennifer Dittmar, Director of Animal Rescue. “Our rehabilitation efforts here, along with all of our other sea turtle rehab partners, are really instrumental from a species recovery standpoint and research standpoint.”
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Ashleigh Clews says both the animals and the people who look after them make the center a rewarding place to work.
“We do get to work with all types of animals, ones that breathe air, ones that don’t. And we have a wonderful animal health staff that is experts in and all of these animals. It’s pretty amazing to watch them work. So a lot of a lot of care, a lot of love goes into every animal that enters these doors.”
To learn more about the center, click here.
To learn more about touring the center, click here.
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