Officials held a blessing ceremony Tuesday for a state-of-the-art facility on Ford Island that will house tons of equipment for marine researchers as well as tanks to rehabilitate sick monk seals.

U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, Gov. Neil Abercrombie and Jane Lubchenco, undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, were among 200 people who attended the ceremony for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Science and Storage Facility, the second phase of the $331 million Pacific Regional Center.

In 2007, contractors completed construction of its ports and piers, the first phase of the project. The final phase — construction of the center’s 315,000-square-foot main facility, next to the 30,000-square-foot storage facility — is expected to be completed by December.

NOAA employees in 12 offices scattered across Oahu are expected to move into the main facility in June 2013. Consolidating the offices under one roof will improve efficiency and coordinated planning, said Pacific Regional Center Site Manager Steve Gallagher.

The regional center is designed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold standards. A 1,500-foot-deep saltwater artesian well will cool the center as well as the research tanks, reducing the center’s carbon footprint by half.

During the ceremony Lubchenco said, "The science that we will conduct here is a reflection of our commitment to healthy oceans and coasts that support a strong ocean and coastal economy as well as a weather-ready nation and weather-ready communities."

The facility has the potential to form partnerships with schools so students can visit to learn about Hawaii’s marine life, she added. NOAA will also partner with the Oahu Visitors Bureau and the Waikiki Aquarium to promote ocean education among visitors.

After the ceremony, attendees toured the facility and saw its 15 marine research and rehabilitation tanks: six for turtles, four for monk seals, three for fish and two for coral.

Charles Littnan, lead scientist of the Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program of NOAA Fisheries, said the monk seal tanks will help increase researchers’ ability to bring in more seals that need treatment.

"This is going to be a critical component of increasing our capacity. We do have a lot of animals that are sick or injured that right now we don’t have the capacity to bring them in," Littnan said. "This is going to be the first real big leap in our ability to hold any significant number of seals."

The tanks, which use a sophisticated filtration system, will allow scientists to bring sick or undernourished monk seals from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands to the facility to be treated and fed before they are released back into the wild. Each tank can hold up to four seals. One of the four tanks will be designated as a quarantine tank should a medical emergency occur.