Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the many by teaching people that there are countless marvelous
creatures living beneath the surface of the sea and that they, too,
share this world with us.
this was what I wanted our aquarium visitors to experience. They might
have seen pictures, but looking at a picture is not like seeing the real,
living thing.
We anchored our boat over the shale reefs and dove down to look
for rock slabs of an appropriate size to fit the exhibit. The rocks also
had to be liftable because everything we were going to do would be
done by our own muscle power. Maneuvering strong nylon netting un-
der larger rock slabs and piling on as many smaller ones as would fit,
we blew some air from our regulators into the five-hundred-pound-
capacity lift bag that was tied to the netting—just enough to barely
lift the rock-filled net o¤ the bottom. It was then easy to push it
toward—but not directly under— our boat forty feet above us. After
a little more air was added, the bag, net, and rocks slowly started to
rise to the surface. The air in the bag began to expand with the de-
creased pressure from shallower depth, and pretty soon the rig was rock-
eting upward at an alarming speed. I can only imagine what it looked
like when it hit the surface.
That was the easy part. Now we had to manually lift the animal-
covered rocks into the boat and lay them carefully on the deck. They
were then covered with wet towels and sprayed with seawater for the
trip back to the aquarium dock.
It was hard work, and on our next rock dive we found out that it
could be dangerous as well. Fully loaded, one of the lift bags burst wide
open just as it reached the surface. The rocks came crashing to the bot-
tom below, just missing two aquarists who were busy gathering a sec-
ond netful of rocks. That taught me never to trust a lift bag again; from
then on we always swam well clear whenever a heavily loaded bag started
up for the surface.
After the backbreaking work of fitting, jigsaw-puzzle-like, all the
invertebrate-covered rocks into the aquarium tank, we added fishes
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