Inexpensive Portable Pool System Useful for Temporary Housing, Medical Isolation,and Rehabilitation of Marine Mammals

摘要

The Navy's marine mammal program has explored a variety of designs for portableself-contained marine mammal pools to support maintaining animals during system deployments. As a consequence, a simplified concept for an easily transported pool and filtration system has been developed. NRaD's efforts in designing, operating, and testing these pools have to date proven their suitability for maintaining bottlenose dolphins without incident for periods of over two weeks. The design could also be modified for holding pinnipeds with little effort. Material costs of this pool design average $5000, most components are available off-the-shelf, and set-up can be easily accomplished in a single day, even in remote areas. Operating procedures for proper maintenance of water quality and animal handling are also discussed in this poster. This type of design may benefit other marine mammal facilities with a requirement for portable temporary holding pools, especially for medical isolation or stranding rehabilitation use.