March 3, 2022, by admin

Written by Karl Cranston Simmons

Continuing with our journal series, this week we interviewed Chance Gray, the Operations Director and the Diving Safety Officer at the Science Center. Chance has much diving experience throughout the world, such as New Zealand, Argentina, and the Florida Keys. Chance has worked for the Science Center for almost five years now. Before that, he was a diving instructor in Key Largo, Florida. He does a lot of the operations work at the Science Center, and still plenty of dive work, working in around 500 dives a year.  

At the start of the interview, we got some insight into Chance’s role in the project. 

“I also act as kind of a project manager for all of our big facilities projects. And that’s essentially what I’m doing for the SPIFy project, the project manager kind of coordinates with the architectural and structural designers, with the permit offices, the contractors, and make sure that we are making decisions as they need to be made and the construction is running smoothly.” 

We were curious, so we asked what he’s looking forward to with SPIFy?

“You know, I think there’s a lot of potential with that building, not just that the hatchery gets a new space which is needed for a long time, but it opens up our basement for more research space, it opens up opportunities in our aquarium for doing new things because there’s more space in the basement, it includes opportunities for education programs in SPIFy as well as connecting with research and other aspects”

He is looking forward to the hatchery getting much-needed space, while also opening up more opportunities for education and the aquarium. 

Chance continues: “SPIFy will enable us to do, like increasing research, increasing education opportunities, increasing, acquiring opportunities, all of that just means that we get to do a little bit more. So probably, it will mean more work. And more projects to come.”

He adds that it may increase his workload, but it will also bring more opportunities and projects to the Science Center. 

“I was looking for something that gave me some more balance in my life, or I could enjoy the job that I was doing, but also live in a place that I enjoy also … I get to spend time with my family and I have a pretty awesome job. And I think what I like most about working here is it’s got to be the team of people. I mean we’re such a dynamic organization and the people that work here are so passionate and invested and connected with this community.”

He chose to move to Alaska in order to have a more balanced life with his family, and explained how well the Science Center staff works with the community. 

“We were about an hour into the project when we uncovered a phantom oil spill. And, you know, we’re working with old construction that really wasn’t well documented. So we don’t really know what we’re digging into when we demolish something”

With the construction area being old, there’s always the possibility of an unknown danger like an oil spill to look out for. 

“I think the thing that is going to impact us and has most consistently is the tides. Having to do all that concrete work in an area that is affected by the tides has been really difficult. And I think we’ve got quite a bit more work down there to do so there’s more logistics to do around tidal changes.”

The tides are an inconvenience to construction, and it’s still an issue they’re trying to work around in the best way. 

When we interviewed Blake and Bill a few weeks ago, a major inconvenience that came up was a second water pump that broke during shipping, which is just another example of something that can impact the construction process. 

“The visitor experience is gonna be one of the coolest things because of the way that we’ve set it up. It enables visitors to actually get out on the platform, when we’re not spawning or actively doing work out there, they can kind of stand over our river and see where fish would be coming back in and they can really get a sense of, of what it’s like.”

The visitor experience will be more immersive, as SPIFy will allow visitors to safely get closer to the action, and enable visitors to have access to the platform when not in use. 

Chance continues: “And even when we are working on the platform, there’s going to be spaces upstream and downstream by the fish ladder, where visitors can watch the action of the spawning that’s happening in the hatchery or stand and look down into the raceway and watch fish swimming up our man made waterfall”

When the platform is being used by staff, visitors will still have plenty of opportunities to see the action. 

“I think there’s some opportunities to potentially let visitors try their hands at spawning a fish … our old system really wasn’t that safe for people that didn’t work here to operate. And this setup will allow visitors to really engage and potentially do some hands-on things in the hatchery.”

According to Chance, visitors to the Science Center can potentially do some real Science Center work, broadening the visitor experience. 

“We’re working on a lot of the site prep right now. So it’s not super exciting work. And it doesn’t necessarily look like a ton has happened yet, but a lot of new concrete has been poured. And a lot of things are just kind of being prepped for the next phase of building up raceways, fish ladder and then moving on to the building. I think our goal is to have the building assembled by the beginning of May, before tourists are coming. So it should start happening very quickly.”

Chance explains that construction isn’t the most exciting right now, but prep work is being done for when the construction crew builds up, and it should be done in time for the tourist season. If you pay attention to local news, you know this year’s tourist season is going to be important, with potentially half a million tourists this summer. 

“This idea was floated around almost 30 years ago … I’ve been involved in the planning for nearly three years now. And it’s a little painful sometimes going through that planning process, but it always pays off in the end. So I’m happy to be done with most of the planning and into the actual doing”

SPIFy has been in the making for quite a while. It’ll be expensive, unpredictable, and troublesome, but as Chance put it, it will pay off in the end. This project is a major one, and it’ll proceed to open up more projects in the future that will further advance the Science Center and its educational goals. 

To keep up on SPIFy and it’s progress and to learn more about the people working to make this happen, make sure to check back into the SPIFy journal to read more interviews.