Creating the exhibits - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 202

Our hope was that the Monterey Harbor Department would replace
pilings shortly after we had our exhibit tank filled with seawater (pro-
jected for the summer of 1984) and we'd be able to move them directly
into place. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be. We heard from the harbor-
master that they'd be pulling some pilings out in early 1983 but then not
again for several years. This was a bit of a problem: we had pilings when
we didn't need them and there'd be no pilings when we did need them.
The harbormaster was more than happy to give us the ones they pulled
in 1983 instead of cutting them up and hauling them o¤ to the landfill,
but what would we do with a dozen animal-covered, fourteen-foot wharf
pilings in the meantime? After a little brainstorming, we came up with
a solution: we'd secure them to the existing pilings underneath the wharf
until we were ready to move them into our exhibit. Fortunately, the
very cooperative harbormaster thought that was a fine idea.
Granite Construction, which was contracted to do the piling re-
placement, used a crane to pull the pilings out of the muddy bottom
of the Bay and hoist them onto the wharf to be cut up and hauled away.
This time, however, we were waiting there, and as soon as we saw a
piling covered with an attractive assortment of live creatures, we asked
for it. The workers then cut it to the exact fourteen-and-a-half-foot
length we needed for our exhibit and tossed it back into the water.
Some of the pilings were waterlogged and sank straight to the bot-
tom. Others were still slightly buoyant and floated. Using our small
Boston Whaler, we towed the pilings one at a time under the wharf and,
with a block and tackle, winched the buoyant pilings twenty feet down
to the bottom. The sunken pilings we raised upright using diver's lift
bags filled with air. Each piling was then tightly secured to an existing
piling with stainless steel bands called Band-It. It was both a time- and
scuba air-consuming job, but by taking turns over several days we man-
aged to secure ten nice animal-encrusted pilings. Over the coming
months we made periodic dives to check on our stash of pilings and to
re-band any that loosened in the ever-present surge beneath the wharf.
A year and a half later the Monterey Bay Habitats exhibit was finally
full of seawater and ready to become the new home for our pilings. The
trick now was to get them out from under the wharf and into the exhibit
without injuring the animals growing on them or, for that matter, us.