to build new sea turtle tanks and roofs to cover them.
Rendering courtesy Gumbo Limbo
By Steve Plunkett
The outdoor seawater tanks that hold endangered sea turtles, sharks and spiny lobsters at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center could be demolished as soon as June to make way for a $1.9 million upgrade.
The Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District approved spending the money in late February, setting the stage for Boca Raton to approve the project this month.
“After about 25 years along that ocean, that salt air is going to deteriorate most everything,’’ Gordon Gilbert, the center’s now-retired school program manager, told district commissioners before their vote.
Gilbert recalled a recent trip there with visitors from England. “They just could not get over Gumbo Limbo,” he said. “It is truly the showplace of this town.”
Replacement tanks have been talked about for years. District commissioners first committed $1 million for them in 2007, Executive Director Robert Langford said, an amount that was carried over in subsequent budgets while the plan crystallized.
The city requested bids with four options, covering two new tanks, four tanks, four tanks with a roof over two of them and four tanks with a roof over all four. Langford recommended that commissioners allocate an additional $940,000 so the full roofs can be added to the project.
Up to now, canopies to protect the marine exhibits and visitors from the sun have shaded the viewing tanks.
The deeper pair of tanks will also have stairs to a second-level viewing area, providing an “expanded experience’’ to visitors, Langford said.
The construction timetable calls for the project to begin in June and be completed by March 2012, said Buddy Parks, the city’s deputy recreation services director. Although the old tanks will be demolished, the staff at the nature center is working on having other public exhibits during construction. Programs will continue except for those directly associated with the tanks, Parks said.
The Friends of Gumbo Limbo plans to raise at least $250,000 to stock the tanks and create interpretive exhibits, said Mike Zewe, the nonprofit group’s development director.
Approval of the tank project comes as nesting season begins for sea turtles along Palm Beach County shores. Signs along State Road A1A remind residents and businesses on the beach to shield or dim their lights from March 1 to Oct. 31 so mother turtles and hatchlings aren’t distracted
or disoriented.
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