The open ocean - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 257

Coming alongside, the Point Lobos got the crane hook onto the
lifting eye, and we leveled o¤. Dave laughed somewhat sheepishly
and explained that he had run out of air to blow out the tanks.
He knew one of the two scuba bottles he'd loaded wasn't full, he
said, but he'd thought it had enough air to do the job. All's well
that ends well, I suppose, but considering where we had just been
I felt it would have been nice to have a little extra air—just in case.
As exciting as it is to go to the bottom of the ocean, from the
standpoint of collecting I believe the ROV is more practical, and
it is cheaper to construct and to operate. Also, there are the safety
factors and life support system that need to be designed for a live
person in the sub. Even though chances are very slim that any-
thing will go wrong, the fact that a living person is down there
means that extreme care must be taken on every dive. On the other
hand, the ROV is simply a highly sophisticated machine, and hu-
man lives would not be jeopardized if there should be an accident.
of dedicating resources to research and development, she said yes. The
extra help would free up two aquarists from much of their daily rou-
tine, giving them time to solve the husbandry challenges inherent in
our expansion plans—the first, and most crucial, step toward devel-
oping the new exhibits.
The two aquarists who would work on new animals were Gilbert
Van Dykhuizen and Freya Sommer. Gilbert began research on the hus-
bandry needs of deep-sea animals, and Freya on jellies. As it turned
out, the work Gilbert and Freya did was exactly what we needed for
the development and completion of the expansion, which would be
called the Outer Bay Wing.
JELLY RESEARCH
The aquarium's jellyfish research actually started on a small scale in 1985
when Freya Sommer took on the challenge of determining whether
jellies could be kept and exhibited year round.