The Monterey Bay Aquarium Has a Secret

good morning John so last week I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium which is from what I can tell one of the best places on earth I got amazed by mudskippers enchanted by otters amused by mola mola and dumbfounded by cuttlefish all of these delights and more are on display for all who attend but Monterey Bay Aquarium has a secret first let's talk about Chicago where in 1930 Shedd Aquarium opened at that time it was the largest aquarium in the world the only problem Chicago as you may have noticed is really far away from the ocean they solved this problem by sending train tanker cars down to Key West Florida filling them with seawater and sending them back to Chicago now of course we can make sea water from scratch which is what they do at Shedd Aquarium today but it's a pain you have to buy huge amounts of something called instant ocean that you mix in to fresh water in like 80,000 gallon tanks and it's expensive so you have to constantly filter that water and reuse it aquariums on coasts do not have this problem because they get their seat water from the sea and Monterey Bay Aquarium gets its seawater from some of the best sea in the whole [Music] if you take a look at the west coast of the United States you'll seem after the coast happens there's that little light-colored bit that's the Continental shelfs geologically that bit is part of the Continental landmass it just happens to be underwater but you also notice just one place where there's a little in the armor of the continental shelf a place where the darker blue goes all the way up to the coast that is Monterey Bay specifically it's Monterey Canyon which has cliff faces more than a mile high and from shelf to base is roughly the depth of the Grand Canyon that Canyon gives researchers access to an amazing variety of ocean depths and thus ocean ecosystems without having to travel far off shore Monterey Bay and the area around it also has consistent winds that push warmer less nutrient-rich waters offshore cool clean nutrient-rich water from deeper into the ocean then rises to the surface in a process called upwelling that makes this area of the Pacific Coast extremely abundant and it makes the water fantastic and so the Monterey Bay Aquarium simply pumps 2,000 gallons of seawater permitted into its facility and a roughly corresponding two thousand gallons leaves headed back into the bay the system that manages this is a marvel and I got to walk around in it and learn a little bit about how it works [Music] the scissor tracks over 33,000 data points making different exhibits in different temperatures for different animals and ensuring that flow is never interrupted for too long it's built to handle massive earthquakes and has a redundant backup for everything at the Monterey Bay Aquarium not only are they guaranteed a perfect match for the chemistry of the sea they also have a perfect match for the microbiome of the sea which turns out to be a benefit to the plants and animals that live there just like we are in a healthy relationship with most of the microorganisms that live on and around us the microbiome of the ocean keeps plants and animals healthy the greater the diversity of microscopic species the less likely it is that harmful infections will occur now this all sounds very rosy so far but it turns out building your whole aquarium around the use of raw seawater opens up a whole other set of engineering challenges the biggest of which is probably barnacles in your pipes now you might think like just put like a barnacle resistant coating on the inside of your pipes but there is no such thing as a barnacle resistant coating they can stick to anything barnacle larvae are also tiny too tiny to filter out of the source without the filter constantly clogging and you can't get the water moving fast enough to keep them from cementing in the pipes so you need two sets of pipes so that several times per year you can close one off at both ends starve it of oxygen killing the barnacles and then send a rubber plug called a pig through the pipe to wash all the dead barnacles into the sea apparently this smells just fantastic at the Monterey Bay Aquarium they'll filter seawater to get the biggest stuff out after the filtering the water heads straight into their Monterey Bay kelp forests so the ecosystem of that tank is as close as possible to the ecosystem of the actual Monterey Bay from there it's distributed throughout the rest of the aquarium that tank serves as a kind of public facing and storage so whenever new water isn't coming in the level of that kelp tank actually starts to drop and for the exhibits that contain wildlife native to Monterey Bay you don't even need to filter that water on the way out because all that stuff is already stuff that's in the bay but while an aquarium in like Atlanta doesn't have to worry about introducing invasive species because it's a pretty long and arduous trip from Atlanta to an ocean ecosystem the Monterey Bay Aquarium discharges water just as often as it comes in it's a constant cycle and for their exotic exhibits they have to filter water out and pass it through what's basically a UV tanning bed which sterilizes the water before it's discharged to the bay so think about that next time you're wondering if you should go in for a tan and finally anyone who's picked up a five gallon bucket of water knows that water is not light so pumping water requires a lot of energy and if the intake gets clogged like say by a smack of jellyfish the giant steel cylinder that keeps big animals from getting sucked in gets crushed like a soda can and the water stops flowing ocean water over the last 50 years or so has gotten warmer and warm water holds less oxygen that's bad for many animals but jellies which have been roaming the world's oceans since before fish even existed appear to be taking up the slack so jelly fish blooms are more common and these steel cylinders need to be replaced more often so nothing about this place is simple but all of this hard work and engineering in the basement creates this magical experience for the millions of people who visit here every year every person who walks in these doors encounters what in many ways feels like another world that we just happen to share this planet with that world in a way walked right up and knocked on the door of Monterey California and humans answered this aquarium is that open door giving us an appreciation for the oceans and an understanding that this in fact is all one planet and needs to be treated as such on the surface it looks like effortless magic underneath we see the secret the work the engineering the science the passion and the geology and climate that make it all possible what a fantastic place [Music] thank you obviously so much to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and all the very cool people on the social media team they're following them on Twitter or Instagram is an absolute joy they are some of the best in the world at science social media so I put links to their social in the description thank you to Andrew Huang for the music in this video all of the tracks were from his album TV and video games and John I'll see you on Tuesday

Channel: vlogbrothers

Views: 301,135

Rating: 4.9754739 out of 5

Keywords: monterey bay aquarium, aquarium, fish, otters, jellyfish, engineering, science, education

Id: A1lwrSrushk

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Fri May 24 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/mleibowitz97]

Wasnt a fan of the title, but i absolutely loved the video

[u/Rankkikotka]

I thought it was called Cetacean Institute.

[u/Neruomute]

whats with the loud music?

[u/7heWafer]

I stopped watching after he said it had a secret then changed the subject.

[u/supremedalek925]

DFTBA!

[u/Bear_faced]

Clickbait. None of this stuff is a “secret” it’s just the engineering required to maintain the aquarium. Did people think it was literally magic? Of course there’s a massive network of pumps and pipes.

[u/big_brotherx101]

I'm a local, and love going when I get a chance. I knew about some of this stuff cuz my gf used to work there, but just seeing it is so cool!

Honestly this is a fantastic place to see. I walk the rec trail often and see some awesome wildlife in the bay.

[u/ChesticlesTesticles]

I just went there today for the first time in 10 years. It was awesome. Great timing for this video to be posted.

[u/juanomex19]

TIL The Monterey Bay Aquarium, an aquarium that sits on the coast, is pumping ocean water to fill it's fish tanks. I would have never guessed if this video didn't tell me.