BEHIND THE GLASS AT LIVING SHORES

A Look Behind the Glass at Living Shores

By Lauren Clem

A Closer Look at What it Takes to Maintain Over 32,000 Square Feet of Interactive Tide Pools, Aquariums, and Exhibits in the White Mountains.

On an early January morning, temperatures linger around -4 degrees as the sun rises over the Mt. Washington Valley. Outside, winds buffet Route 16, and only the most intrepid skiers and hikers have made it out for the morning runs. Inside Living Shores Aquarium in Glen, however, spring has already arrived. A tropical wonderland greets staff members as they arrive at 6:30 a.m. for the start of their morning shift. Inside, squawking birds, chirping otters, and schools of colorful fish greet them, awake and ready for their morning meal.

Located on the Story Land property on Route 16, Living Shores opened its doors in November 2019 after more than a year of preparations. The 32,000-square-foot aquarium is home to fish, birds, otters, and other small animals, and bills itself as “New England’s newest hands-on experience.” What it lacks in size it makes up for in interactive exhibits, with five touch pools, five viewing exhibits, and a walk-in aviary where guests can get up-close with tropical birds. The attraction was open for four months before the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to shut its doors to visi-

DID YOU KNOW?

In order for staff to thoroughly clean some of the fish tanks, they actually have to partially drain them and then hop directly into the tanks! tors in March 2020. It reopened last May, once again welcoming the public to a tropical oasis after the 14-month hiatus.

For staff, the close environment means getting to know the animals on a personal level, with animal care staff trading off daily responsibilities looking after the fish, otters, birds, invertebrates, and snakes. Every morning starts with a check of all the exhibits and systems in the building, including water temperature, pH level, and water oxygen levels.

“A lot of what we do is feeding and making sure everybody has fresh food and fresh water—and then we get to cleaning. And cleaning’s the bulk of our day,” said Brittany Noel, an animal care specialist who lives in Madison. “For fish, it might be draining a tank down to about 25 percent and actually hopping into the tank and scrubbing the glass clean.”

Noel, a former special education teacher who grew up in Gorham, didn’t originally plan on a career working with animals. After nearly 10 years in education, she decided to make a career switch in 2019. The pandemic delayed her plans slightly, and she began working at Living Shores in April 2021, shortly before the aquarium reopened to the public.

“I love animals,” she said. “I love science, and I have a similar passion for [the animals] that I have had for people. As somebody who worked in special ed, I feel like I always have a bit of a soft spot for living things that need extra help. Animal care just kind of fit with that.”

The staff prepare the animals’ meals in the back room, where a whiteboard details the dietary needs

Otters and Their Vocalizations

Asian small-clawed otters found at Living Shores Aquarium, are the smallest of the 13 otter species. They have 12 different types of vocalizations that they use for contact, summons, greetings, threats, and alarm calls. The animal care staff must be familiar with their calls to know how the otters are feeling. Some of these include:

• Soft chirping or squeaking

This is a good noise to hear. It means the otter is happy.

• Loud screaming

This is an anxious otter.

• Chuffing/snorting

This is a threat display response. It means, “Back away and don’t mess with me.”

of every fish at Living Shores. Sharks and crabs eat krill, while rays prefer squid, and freshwater fish get pellets or fish flakes. The food is stored in several freezers and replenished every couple of months by an aquarium supply company that delivers restaurant-quality fish. Heather Stephens, animal care supervisor, explained that most of the animals at the aquarium are still young and will get much larger before they reach their full size.

“Everyone’s still very much a baby, so as they grow, they’ll eat way more food—and we’ll place more orders,” she said.

Like in a restaurant, staff must follow federal regulations regarding sanitation and only prepare enough food for one day before thawing out the next morning’s meal.

“Really, the fish eat better than we do,” she added.

Like Noel, Stephens didn’t start out in the aquarium field. A resident of Berlin, she began working at Story Land at the age of 16, eventually becoming operations manager. A longtime animal lover, she had once studied to be a veterinary technician. When Palace Entertainment, the company that owns Story Land, announced its plans to open an aquarium in 2018, she saw an opportunity to trade amusement park work for animals, and applied for the job. Now, she cares for marine life from all over the world, a job she said she transitioned into surprisingly easily after interacting with guests at a theme park for 25 years.

Out on the floor, residents of the aquarium’s touch pools grow impatient as they wait for their morning meal. Arrow-shaped guitarfish poke their noses eagerly from the water, and nocturnal sharks creep cautiously from the shadows around the bases of rocks. Noel said her favorite animals to interact with include Rex the leopard gecko and a bearded dragon named Pete. The cownose rays are a rambunctious bunch, often swimming laps around her when she climbs in to clean their tank.

DID YOU KNOW?

Many of the fish need to be hand-fed by staff to ensure they have enough to eat. The spiny appearing porcupine puffer fish, for example, will poke their noses out from the water resembling a dog looking for treats! “Every day is different,” she said. “The animals that I work with, they always bring a smile to my face. Even if I’m having a tough day, the animals will do something that will make me laugh or giggle and will melt the frustration away.”

Some animals require extra attention to ensure they get enough to eat. In the Caribbean reef tank, angelfish and grunts live alongside porcupine puffers and moray eels, competing for food much like they would in the wild. To feed them, staff climb a metal staircase to a platform overlooking the open-top tank and drop fish flakes and other delicacies onto the clear surface. The porcupine puffer fish, slow-moving despite its spiny appearance, is fed by hand, poking its nose from the water with the air of a dog looking for treats.

“He’ll come right to the back of the tank where we have a platform where we’ll feed from,” Noel said. “He’ll take shrimp or squid or clam right out of our hands.”

The moray eel also requires special care. A nocturnal predator by nature, the moray must be coaxed from its daytime hiding spot with a tasty treat speared on the end of a bamboo pole. Stephens explained how staff are careful to keep the fish well fed, sometimes for the other animals’ safety as well as their own.

“If you put in a fish that’s aggressive with other fish, it’s going to kill the other fish in the tank,” she said. “You have to know what fish go in with what fish. And that’s where Dave comes in.”

“Dave” is curator David Houghton, also referred to by his coworkers as the “master of all fish.” A home hobbyist for the past 40 years, he began his professional career more than two decades ago at Detroit’s Belle Isle Aquarium. After budget

A Changing Climate

As ocean temperatures warm around the planet, the change poses a risk for corals, which make up the colorful ecosystems known as coral reefs. Corals have a narrow temperature tolerance, and even small changes in temperature can result in coral bleaching, when the coral loses its color and the algae it feeds on. The bleaching affects not only the coral reef, but the species that depend on it, including clownfish, lobsters, and seahorses. Curator David Houghton said he hopes to introduce a live coral tank at Living Shores in the future to help educate visitors about the effects of climate change as he mentioned the affect that man and the warming of the ocean has had on the majority of coral reefs.

cuts temporarily shut down the aquarium in 2005, he went out on the professional circuit, working stints at zoos and aquariums in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Texas. In 2018, he was back in North Carolina when he saw a posting on the Association of Zoos and Aquariums website for a curator position at a new aquarium in Glen, New Hampshire, and packed his bags to head north.

“When I first came here in August of 2018, it was basically a dirt floor,” he said.

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The building was formerly the home of Heritage New Hampshire, the history-themed museum operated by the Morrell family, who also owned Story Land. The family sold both properties shortly after Heritage New Hampshire closed in 2006. In 2018, Palace Entertainment, the theme park’s current owner, announced plans to open an aquarium in the vacant building.

Over the next 15 months, as crews transformed the former museum space into a modern aquarium, Houghton worked his contacts in the aquarium world to fill its exhibits with fish. Opening a new aquarium, he said, was the main draw of the job at Living Shores, though the space has unique challenges that come from its location outside a major metropolitan area. Those challenges, he said, start with the nitrogen cycle, the system of waste and renewal that governs all animal life.

“All aquatic life, it eats, and it produces waste,” he said. As waste decomposes, it breaks down into ammonia and nitrates that affect the quality of the water. Each exhibit at Living Shores has its own filtration system, and each filtration system is capable of turning over the contents of the tank three to four times an hour. On top of that, water needs to be replaced on a regular basis to keep the animals healthy.

In most aquariums around the country, Houghton explained, public sewer infrastructure makes replacing the exhibits a relatively simple matter of washing the spent water down the drain. However, Living Shores, like many of the attractions around the Mt. Washington Valley, faces the challenge of having no public sewer connection. The septic system maxes out at about 3,800 gallons per day. Replacing just 10 percent of the water in the aquarium’s largest exhibit displaces 2,500 gallons of liquid, not counting the other exhibits or the wastewater produced by the building’s bathrooms, restaurant, and other operations.

“Up here presents a challenge, because we’re on a septic field, so we’re recycling the water as much as we possibly can,” he said.

The aquarium relies on a bark water recovery system to reclaim some of the water and route it back into the system. An evaporator is also a crucial part of operations, since salt water isn’t compatible with the septic system. Altogether, Houghton estimates the exhibits contain about 37,000 gallons of saltwater and 31,000 gallons of freshwater on any given day.

Along with the recovery system, Houghton said that coming to work at Living Shores, he had to deal with some new critters. The otters are the aquarium’s only mammal species and highly regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture. From his office off the aquarium floor, he can see into the enclosure where the otters live when they’re not on exhibit. As he chats about the aquarium’s operations, the sound of frantic chirping comes from the enclosure next door.

“Those are the girls in there. They hear me talking, so they want out,” he said.

Living Shores has five otters—two females and three males—and all of them use vocalizations to express their needs to caretakers and each other. The group, Houghton explained, is divided up into two pods, so staff rotate them on public display, with one group always in a private enclosure. There, they’ll engage in training and relationship building with the caretakers, often playing with each other and whatever toys they can get their paws on.

“They are extremely curious, and they will get into all kinds of mischief,” said Houghton. To demonstrate, he holds up his phone.

DID YOU KNOW?

It’s estimated that the Living Shores exhibits contain about 37,000 gallons of saltwater and 31,000 gallons of freshwater on any given day.

Aquarium Life in a Pandemic

Like many local attractions, Living Shores closed its doors to guests during the first year of the pandemic, remaining closed from March 16, 2020, until May 8, 2021. However, unlike other businesses that could temporarily shut down operations and pause their employee activity, Living Shores had a steady stream of animal care staff entering and exiting the building to continue their work caring for its most important feature: the animals. Lauren Hawkins, director of marketing, said the aquarium’s residents were perfectly happy to enjoy a quiet year interacting with only their favorite humans, who took extra safety precautions during that time.

“The animals lived a really glorified life for over a year with the same group of people caring for them in a wonderful building without any guests,” she said. “Our team worked really hard to be that frontline worker, in a sense, that wasn’t necessarily dealing with the public, but was caring for animals.”

In addition to concern for guests, she said, aquarium staff were worried in the early days of the pandemic that the animals, especially the otters and birds, might be able to catch COVID-19. Research has since shown that animals can become infected with the disease, though the risk of animals passing it to people is low.

As the reopening day approached, Hawkins said, staff were excited to once again welcome guests to the building. The aquarium was only open for four months before the pandemic forced it to shut down, making the 2021 reopening a fresh start.

“Everyone was just itching to get out and do stuff,” she said. “We had really high demand at Story Land, which caused really high demand at the aquarium. We sold out a bunch of days.”

Since then, they’ve continued to work to improve their guest experience, shutting down for the month of March this year to deep clean the building and upgrade the HVAC and other systems.

“It’s ever changing, and we’re continuing to see how people flow through the aquarium, respond to the aquarium,” Hawkins said. “It’s definitely not done growing by any means.”

Small teeth marks are visible in the colored plastic case, and a piece of the rubber charging port is missing entirely.

“It’s called an OtterBox. It’s waterproof. It’s not otter-proof,” he says.

Over in the lorikeet enclosure, Stephens joins Chelsea Brofman, an animal care specialist from Berlin, as they do a final check with the birds. Though most of the staff don’t like to choose a favorite animal, Brofman admits she has a special bond with Camo, a scaly-breasted lorikeet that flies over to greet her when she enters. As the two women make their way around the exhibit, the birds use them as a perch, catching a ride on their shoulders and heads. It’s a risky arrangement, since lorikeets are known for creating a mess.

“Every morning I come in and I start with the floors,” explains Stephens. “We’ll pull these trees out, maybe one or two a day, and take them downstairs and wash them leaf by leaf by leaf.”

Like Stephens, Brofman worked at Story Land as a teenager, but she later left the area to study psychobiology and worked internships at SeaWorld, Miami Seaquarium, and the Caldwell

Zoo in Tyler, Texas. She wasn’t confident about finding a full-time job in the field, since animal work can be very competitive. She later returned to the area and was working at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Laconia when she heard about Living Shores.

“Honestly, this is the best thing for this area, because as someone growing up in the mountains, I had classmates who had never seen the ocean in high school,” she said.

The aquarium has already played host to several school groups, and plans to introduce an education outreach program in the coming months. Christopher Evangelist will serve as the aquarium’s education lead, bringing some of its more portable critters to schools and senior centers. In addition to the local community, said Lauren Hawkins, director of marketing, the aquarium expects to draw visitors from throughout the region and serve as an indoor alternative during winter or the hot summer months.

It’s a big change from when the property opened as a small, historical walk-through experience in 1976, but as the morning crowds begin to filter in on this January morning, it’s clear they’re continuing in a tradition of family entertainment. Children pet spotted bamboo sharks in the touch pool, and happy screams come from the red garra exhibit as visitors feel the fish’s distinct “kiss” on their fingers.

The only difference is in this re-birth: the critters are real, and the exhibits don’t turn off when guests go home for the night.

DID YOU KNOW?

Living Shores has five otters that are extremely curious and tend to get into all kinds of mischief. Just ask Curator David Houghton about his OtterBox-protected phone ... which just happens to have teethmarks all over it.