Creating the exhibits - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 194

was a real snoozer. However, putting into practice my notion of vari-
ety in tank shape, we drew up a design: an eye-catching quarter sphere
of clear acrylic that has not only worked for the sand dollars, but has
also lured people into stopping, looking, and learning.
THE PROGRAM TAKES SHAPE
The overall exhibit program was coming together. Some ideas were
dropped, such as trying to show animals that live beneath rocks. That
one became a logistical nightmare: the animals simply didn't like light
and either disappeared or became very unhappy when they were exposed
to lights. While they might have been quite happy if we'd let them stay
under a rock in the dark, that wouldn't have made for much of a display.
Once the exhibit program was more or less in place, finalizing the
exact sizes, shapes, and placement of the smaller gallery tanks became
a high priority. This needed to be done quickly so the architects could
keep on schedule designing the layout of walls and drains, the electri-
cal system, and climate control for the building, all of which had to
be coordinated.
I began by sketching the tank sizes and shapes that I felt best met
the needs of the animals as well as reflected my ideas on how to dis-
play them. I used the empirical method of cutting out pieces of paper
to scale and moving them around on the plan until everything fit. I
changed the sizes and shapes of the tanks slightly here and there where
necessary, but in the end this method worked rather well. I made sure
there was room for holding tanks, utility sinks, aquarists' tools—and
people. I then drew the final tank shapes and sizes on the floor plan,
which was given to the architects. These days this would all be done
with a computer and a CAD program. It may have been low-tech, but
hey, it worked.
Typical of all pioneering projects, not everything went smoothly.
There were many false starts, and some ideas were simply abandoned.
One disaster involved an attempt to make artificial rocks. The Rock
and Waterscape Company in Los Angeles had been contracted to make
artificial FRC (fiberglass-reinforced cement) rocks that we could place
on the ocean bottom to be colonized by marine life. The rocks were