Collecting the fish - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 225

It's a common misconception that sharks are ravenous eating ma-
chines waiting to devour anything they come across. In fact, nothing
could be further from the truth. A long-term study done by Gilbert
Van Dykhuizen and volunteer Henry Mollet on the food intake of our
sevengills has shown that they have an extremely e‹cient metabolism
and need surprisingly little food—the equivalent of just 0.2 percent of
their body weight daily—to function and grow. In this regard, sharks
make an interesting and striking contrast to sea otters, which require
20 to 25 percent of their body weight daily just to survive.
SANTA CRUZ ISLAND
The main message we want our visitors to carry home with them is
that the marine life they see in our exhibits is actually found right here
in Monterey Bay. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that we collected
all the animals in Monterey Bay. It does mean, however, that they're
known to live here, or at least that they travel through the area. In fact,
many animals may be uncommon or only occasional visitors to the
Bay, being much more abundant elsewhere.
From the practical standpoint of collecting, it always makes sense to
go where the species can be found in large numbers. With this in mind,
we planned a trip to Santa Cruz Island, twenty miles o¤shore from
Santa Barbara and two hundred miles south of Monterey, to collect
certain fishes for the Kelp Forest exhibits.
Ernie Brooks, owner of the renowned Brooks Institute of Photog-
raphy in Santa Barbara, o¤ered to help. In addition to teaching com-
mercial photography, the Brooks Institute o¤ers a thorough course in
all phases of underwater photography, and Ernie has a fifty-seven-foot
boat, Just Love, which he uses for the practical phase of these classes.
The boat comes complete with cabins, bunks, and galley for overnight
stays at the nearby Channel Islands—perfect for use as a floating base
camp. The plan was to trailer our Lucile down to Santa Barbara, launch
it, and run it over to the island to rendezvous with Ernie and the Just
Love. The target species for this trip were fishes that are not common
in Monterey, such as blacksmith fish ( Chromis punctipinnis ), halfmoons