The Tech Behind the Life Support Systems at the Tennessee Aquarium
CHATTANOOGA, TN – On the follow up to last weeks super awesome Tech Byte at the Tennessee Aquarium, our friend Alison Pryor gave us a second behind the scenes look at a little more tech that makes the aquarium function.
When the aquarium first opened, I was in high school and we all joked that the aquarium was built on the riverfront to have an endless supply of water right next to them. Turns out that’s incorrect. There’s so much more that goes into the millions of gallons that flow through here every day.
According to Manger of Life Support Systems Sean Hill, “Water comes from Tennessee American Water Company. And we run it through the chlorination filters and that’s river journey and, ocean journey. So they dechlorinated the water, and then we store the water into a fresh one holding basin. But the water then is distributed to all the different individual, exhibits.”
The water makes its way all the way to the top and is passed down accordingly to the salt water and fresh water sides then people like Sean and his team work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to make sure everything in the aquarium is taken care of.
” We actually have to make the saltwater,” says Hill. “We have what we call instant ocean that we use and we have a recipe that we add different chemicals and we make the salt maybe once a month. That’s about 16, thousand gallons. We make once a month. And from there is pumped into a tank, which is supplemented to the different, tanks that need it.”
The neat thing to me about watching with Mr. Hill in the control room is that they have instant notifications about everything. He showed us the otter tank and how the water has to be a certain temperature and level otherwise, him and the team get notifications direct to their cellphone before it becomes a problem.
“Yeah, we’ll get an alarm and it would, text our cell phone and let us know. Hey, the water levels low for the otters,” says Mr. hill. “And we’re here to monitor to make sure it turns off.” Mr. Hill and his team work tirelessly for the residents of the aquarium and everyone has worked holidays and weekends because even when they are closed, they’re still responsible for sustaining all the life in the aquarium.
For someone who has enjoyed this for years, it was great to see the behind the scenes and the tech with all the alarms and temperature sensors on how it works. Many thanks to all of our friends at the Tennessee Aquarium for everything they do, and for letting us showcase their tech that most people never get to see.
