Creating the exhibits - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 204

The wharf piling end of the Monterey Bay Habitats was located next
to an inlet pipe that would supply unfiltered seawater each night to
bathe the filter-feeding animals with plankton. This would also be pe-
riodically supplemented by volunteer and sta¤ divers feeding them a
“krill shake” from a squeeze bottle, a rich, nutritious slurry made from
krill whipped up in a blender.
THE SHALE LOOK-DOWN
Among the more interesting underwater environments of Monterey
Bay are the shale beds. Located just east of Monterey Harbor, these
soft sedimentary rocks jut a few feet out of the sandy bottom of the
Bay and are home to rock-boring clams, or piddocks ( Zirphaea spp . ).
The shells of these clams can reach a length of five inches, and as the
animals grow, they enlarge their holes by grinding their rough shells
against the soft shale. With their shells and bodies totally concealed in
the rock, all that is visible is the flowerlike tip of their siphon lying
flush with the rock's surface.
When these clams die, from old age or by being eaten by a preda-
tor, a cavity is left in the rock that's quickly taken over by another an-
imal. The shale rocks therefore are home to many more animals than
are found on the hard surfaces of granite reefs. As the shale is eroded
by waves and bored by animals, flat slabs break o¤ and fall to the bot-
tom below. Still filled and covered with animals, these slabs of shale
can be collected and brought into the aquarium.
Many years ago I dived o¤ Los Angeles and collected shale to keep
in my home saltwater aquarium. The abundant life in those rocks fas-
cinated Betty and me. For this reason, one of my favorite displays at
the Monterey Bay Aquarium is the shale look-down exhibit. It is an
open, shallow, eight-foot-long tank, the bottom of which we covered
with slabs of “living” shale. On the surface of the water are floating
magnifying glasses, which the visitor can move around to get an up-
close-and-personal look at the creatures living on and in the rocks. My
only regret is that we weren't able to make the exhibit a little larger.
Once the aquarium opened, we found that visitors tend to lose them-
selves in these shale menageries while others impatiently wait their turn.