Celebrating 20 years with the National Aquarium in Baltimore

As McLaren’s Baltimore office celebrates its 20th year, we also want to celebrate our longstanding relationship with the National Aquarium. Having watched Baltimore develop over the past two decades, McLaren has had a part in engineering many of the area’s iconic landmarks and we are honored to have been part of NAIB’s growth into the largest tourism attraction in Maryland.

McLaren has been part of helping visitors to the aquarium “see the world from below the surface” with work on exhibits including Amazon River Forest Exhibit; Dolphin Pool Restoration, Seahorse Exhibit and Blacktip Reef Exhibit. As we look back on the relationships, we have built with NIAB, we also remember the incredible sea life that these exhibits house, including Calypso, who passed a way this month. The 500lb rescued sea turtle was a species ambassador for conservation and visitor favorite—also a favorite of our PE Divers.

Our team has also performed a structural assessment of all of the National Aquarium’s facilities on both piers and helped renovate an existing warehouse building, that occupies an entire city block, into the Animal Care & Rescue Center for the National Aquarium in Baltimore. The project doubled the capacity it previously had for the rehabilitation of rescued animals for release.

Currently, as part of the National Aquarium in Baltimore’s Master Plan, they hope to one day transform the canal between Piers 3 and 4 in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor into a 15,000 square foot floating wetland habitat. The aim is to provide an ecosystem to numerous native species while allowing visitors a unique perspective of the salt marsh habitat of the Chesapeake Bay. To test the stability and resiliency of a large-scale project, McLaren’s Marine team engineered a 15-foot by 20-foot small-scale prototype that is currently exceeding expectations.