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Behind the scenes and below the sea lion pool at the zoo

It is a place where people come to see all sorts of animals and in the excitement of those moments visitors usually don't realize what's around them.

It is a place where people come to see all sorts of animals and in the excitement of those awesome moments visitors often don't realize what else is around them and that's a good day for David Jarvis, the Life Support System Supervisor, which in a nutshell means he's in charge of the water in all of the exhibits and there's a lot of water.

"Hippos is about 65,000 gallons of water, here were about 200,000 in the main pool," he explains.

The penguins use about 35,000 and Polar Bear Point has around 60,000 gallons.

"I don't want the phone to ring they don't call when the water is good."

That's why he and his staff of four are constantly monitoring all of the levels.

"There's a lot of things that go on, but it's on demand we don't add chemicals until they're needed."

As you probably imagined different animals require different things. Sea Lion Sound is a salt water pool, the hippos are swimming in fresh water.

"Initially this type of filtration was done for fish for corals. About 30 years ago it was the Toledo Zoo that decided to put hippos in a fish tank and so things kind of changed at that point," Jarvis explains.

Go under the man made sea for the sea lions to the primary filtration room and you'll find a small city of big tanks.

"There's about a mile of piping running underground here," he points out.

There are similar systems for the hippos, penguins and Kuly, the polar bear. Each pool is also kept at a different temperature.

"Hippo we heat that through the winter we've got fish in there so we keep that one running at about 72 degrees."

The sea lion pool is about 65 degrees.

"My job is a blend of a lot of things there's some biology, there's some chemistry, there's some engineering a lot of math and science."

The only thing he doesn't have to do is dive in and clean.

"No, no, no that's that's the keepers. The keepers actually do the diving and they clean the glass and they also do some vacuuming and scrubbing in the pool."

So the next time you visit the Saint Louis Zoo look beyond the amazing animals and appreciate the work of a few guys who really go with the flow and deserve a flood of praise.

You can take a behind the scene tour of the Life Support Area. For more information on that, visit here.

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