Biology Reference
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tors, would methodically eat every passing fish that would fit into their
large mouths while the speedy salmon picked o¤ the schooling anchovies
one by one. I could see why the founders needed a little help from some-
one who understood the behavior of animals in aquariums.
My predictions of the carnage that would occur in a single all-
encompassing exhibit were heeded, and the one large roundabout idea
was tossed out in favor of three exhibits. This decision would allow the
predators and troublemakers to be kept apart from their prey and from
more fragile habitat components, like the living kelp.
On my next trip to Monterey I looked at the new three-part configu-
ration, which consisted of a kelp forest, a sea otter exhibit, and one
large tank featuring four di¤erent environments of Monterey Bay: the
deep granite reefs, the sandy bottom, the shale beds, and the wharf pil-
ings. I recommended that if they wanted to have good species repre-
sentation of the smaller fishes and invertebrates, these needed to be
displayed separately from their potential predators. The logical divi-
sion was to put the smaller fishes in the Kelp Forest and the larger preda-
tory fish in the Monterey Bay Habitats exhibit.
The interaction between predators and prey may be a part of the
natural world, but it's not something we want in an aquarium. Apart
from the loss of valuable specimens, we like to think that our charges
will live a long life without the fear of ending up as lunch. As a result,
compromises often have to be made in the design of live exhibits.
An example of a successful compromise was the wharf piling habi-
tat, a key component of the Monterey Bay Habitats exhibit. In the real
world of the ocean, a wide variety of small fishes would be able to sur-
vive in such an environment, where predatory lingcod and large-
mouthed rockfish like the bocaccio ( Sebastes paucispinis ) rarely natu-
rally go. In an aquarium, however, these small fishes would not last
long, even in a very large tank providing nooks and crannies for cover,
with such predators lurking nearby.
The solution was to display full-sized wharf pilings in the Monterey
Bay tank, to suggest the overall look of the habitat, and then, in a sep-
arate, smaller exhibit, place invertebrate-covered sections of pilings and
smaller fish species, like the live-bearing surfperches (Embiotocidae)
that are so abundant beneath the Monterey wharf. Not only would
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