PORT ANGELES — The Feiro Marine Life Center will receive $15 million from NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries from the Inflation Reduction Act toward the construction of the Marine Discovery Center.
Feiro and NOAA’s Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary have partnered to design and build a new joint visitor center downtown on the Port Angeles Waterfront Center campus.
The campus is home to the recently constructed Field Arts & Events Hall performing arts center, and it’s where the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe plans to develop a cultural center.
“The Feiro Marine Life Center was originally conceived as a laboratory space for the community college,” said Melissa Williams, Feiro Marine Life Center executive director. “Since becoming a standalone nonprofit facility in 2008, we have been searching for a way to make our financial and physical operations sustainable and to meet the education and animal care needs of the future. This collaboration will enable Art Feiro’s legacy to live on within the Olympic Peninsula.”
The funding brings the total raised for the Marine Discovery Center to 68 percent of the construction costs, and it enables the project’s timeline to advance, with ground breaking tentatively scheduled for summer 2026, depending on additional fundraising.
Feiro signed an agreement with NOAA on Dec. 31 to receive the additional funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. An initial $3 million commitment to complete the Marine Discovery Center design was announced in August 2023 as a part of a total $3.3 billion total national investment.
The new interpretive center will provide a venue that helps make the sanctuary more accessible to the community by providing information about sanctuary habitats and wildlife, as well as the watersheds that support them.
Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary and the Feiro Marine Life Center have collaborated on the North Olympic Peninsula on education, stewardship and science for more than 20 years.
“Feiro Marine Life Center and Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary have similar missions and audiences,” said Kevin Grant, sanctuary superintendent. “This shared facility will strengthen our partnership while allowing us to improve and expand upon our collective ability to provide quality, relevant education and outreach services to the community, strengthening ties among NOAA, Port Angeles and the entire Olympic Peninsula.”
“It is great to see Clallam County receiving so much investment thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, including the additional $15 million through NOAA to help support the Marine Discovery Center, the next component of the Port Angeles Waterfront Center and new home of Feiro Marine Life Center and the Welcome Center for the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary,” Clallam County Commissioner Mark Ozias said. “When complete, the Marine Discovery Center will help connect people of all ages and from all over the world with our ocean ecosystems as well as adding a vital new asset and economic driver to Port Angeles.”
The Feiro Marine Life Center was built in 1981 through the efforts of the late Arthur D. Feiro, a former high school science teacher who recognized the value in having a place on the Port Angeles waterfront where children, residents and thousands of annual summer visitors could experience and learn about the marine environment he so loved.
Until 2008, Feiro was a lab space for Peninsula College. It transitioned to a 501(c)(3) after the college underwent strategic changes during the Great Recession. The building on City Pier is owned by the city of Port Angeles.
Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary was established in 1994 and includes 3,188 square miles of marine waters off the Olympic Peninsula. The sanctuary lies mostly within the Usual and Accustomed treaty fishing areas of the Hoh Tribe, Makah Tribe, Quileute Tribe and the Quinault Indian Nation.
Habitats within the sanctuary range from intertidal coastal areas and towering kelp forests to deep-sea coral and sponge communities. Twenty-nine species of marine mammals and more than 100 bird species reside in or migrate through the sanctuary, and it contains some of the most productive habitats for fish in the world.
