Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
a thin cement slurry. Much experimentation was done by the Sand
City shop crew, and ultimately they produced beautifully made wall
panels.
Chris Anderson, who had experience with rocks from prospecting
in California's Gold Country, took on the task of developing techniques
for the manufacture of artificial rocks. We needed two kinds of artificial
rocks. For ones that needed to look real because they would be close
to the viewing public, latex molds were made of actual granite rocks
that had interesting surface textures. These molds were then used to
form the surface texture of the FRC rock, which ended up looking and
feeling just like the real thing. For rocks that we expected would be
quickly overgrown by algae, detailed surface texture was not impor-
tant, so no latex molds were required; shapes and rough texture were
created by carving the cement before it became hard.
After some testing, the rock-making techniques were perfected and
the Sand City shop went into production. We began by making artificial
rocks that fit exactly inside the fiberglass exhibit tanks. The first ex-
hibit we worked on would show the visitor the di¤erences in the ani-
mals and plants that grow on vertical versus horizontal rock faces in
the kelp forest just o¤shore. To achieve this, it was important that the
rocks be in the ocean as long as possible before the aquarium opened
so they would have plenty of time for plants and animals to settle and
grow on them. Acting on the lessons we'd learned from the failure of
our first flimsy rocks, I designed a heavy steel structure that we secured
to the seafloor with several hundred pounds of concrete. To this struc-
ture we would firmly bolt the FRC rock panels.
Marine life that grows on hard surfaces in the sea faces intense com-
petition for living space as constant “space wars” are waged between
organisms. In these battles, each organism uses potent chemical
“weapons” to keep interlopers at bay. The result of this jostling for space
is that the distribution of animals becomes uneven as certain animals
become dominant and successfully fight o¤ invaders. One of the goals
of this exhibit was to show this dominance and the resulting patchi-
ness of distribution.
Just putting our artificial rock panels out in the ocean would even-
tually result in their becoming well encrusted with some form of ma-
Search WWH ::
Custom Search