In May 2021, the Yorkshire Wildlife Park opened the new ‘Point Lobos’ expansion featuring a family of six California sea lions. The sea lions arrived from California via ZSL Whipsnade Zoo.

The pool, constructed from steel reinforced shotcrete holds three million litres of water, making it the largest filtered sea lion exhibit in the world. Based on a stretch of Californian coastline, Point Lobos is a two-acre water feature, two artificial lakes reserve with a pebble beach areas and several small concrete islands, carved and coloured to a natural appearance.

The main lake at Point Lobos measures seventy metres long and over three metres deep. This state of the art system is capable of filtering three million litres of salt water per hour. The pool was constructed using alcathene pipe as a temporary shutter and guide rail for screeding off against, as there were no right angles or straight lines involved, just a natural organic shaped water retaining structure

The original works programme was falling behind due to difficult ground excavation conditions and the onset of winter. The overriding concern was that the sea lions had already left California, and had to be on site when they had cleared quarantine at Whipsnade Zoo.

GSSL were called in late to assist the main contractor in their efforts to meet the deadline for completion and take over the construction of the concrete water retaining structure.

The concrete was treated with a waterproofing additive at batching stage, and had an additional waterproof membrane applied following the shotcrete curing period by a company called Metflex Ltd based in Stockton-On-Tees who also kindly allowed the use of the photograph of the completed project…

Low daytime, and lower night time temperatures, combined with a harsh winter did not help with maintaining the programme, but the use of concrete accelerator, frost blankets, high strength shotcrete materials from the RMC batching plant, weekend working by the GSSL crew, and committed effort by everyone on site managed to bring the works in on time to enable the Sea Lions to move in to their new home.