7/3/2015 - Right Half of Hawaiian Monk Seal Tank

not the most naturalistic exhibit by any means, but with over a million gallons for five seals and the main pool is deep, not bad. one can say it is a glorified theater with massive air exchange ducts and those stand-out FRP pony walls. with all new acrylic everywhere, all pools and ecks sealed and resurfaced and the mesh barriers, these seals have it made. one thing Lee and co. did was bring the rare and obscure to the middle of the country. a fine addition to a facility in transition that has a strategy laid out for whomever takes over. can't say, Lee threw up the peace sign and booted south. set minnesota zoo up for the next decade plus.

Is the entire exhibit indoors? Is there any scope for natural light, air, wind or rain, at least during summer?

The exhibit is entirely indoors, which is rather practical considering Minnesota's bleak winters. There is a lot of natural light that filters through into the building and here is a photo of the pool (taken by "geomorph") from 5 years ago:

http://www.zoochat.com/584/discovery-bay-bottlenose-dolphin-show-amphitheater-151923/

Right, so they had an indoor pool and needed to repopulate it after they ditched the dolphins. I think an aquarium tank for sharks would have been preferable TBH, and if they wanted pinnipeds why not go for a less-tropical species that could have been displayed outdoors?

Hawaiian monk seals are very special, now only displayed at the Minnesota Zoo outside of Hawaii (apparently there were some at the Sea World in San Antonio). The nearby Como Zoo has sea lions and harbor seals so maybe that is why the Minnesota Zoo doesn't.

In the master plan for the zoo there are several options proposed for this building including renovating it as an Amazon exhibit with giant otters. With a new zoo director on the horizon it seems like the monk seals are probably there for the foreseeable future, but who knows what the future holds (other than probably not dolphins).

They originally planned for stocking this tank with fish, but that was determined to be too expensive. Also, these are the seals that were at Seaworld San Antonio.