Pelagic fishes - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 269

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PELAGIC FISHES
IN PLANNING THE AQUARIUM'S open ocean expansion, the first step was
to come up with a species list of potential exhibit animals. We knew
we would do major exhibits on jellies. Another main goal was to have
a huge tank that would exhibit a community of pelagic, or open sea,
fishes—a group that had rarely been displayed in public aquariums.
The idea was to represent the open ocean environment with as many
species as possible that could get along together in one tank. Thus, not
only did we have the challenge of collecting and keeping these fishes,
but we had the problem of compatibility as well. Even beyond the pos-
sibility of them eating one another, would they all be able to get the
food they needed, or would the more laid-back fish be outcompeted
by the more aggressive feeders? There was a lot to learn, and there was
only one way to do that: we just had to give it a try.
Open sea fishes tend to be migrators, visiting Monterey only sea-
sonally or during El Niño years, when warm water moves up from the
south. Schools of albacore tuna, for example, come by each year on
their migration route north to Canada and across the Pacific Ocean to
Japan. The bizarre-looking ocean sunfish show up in Monterey Bay al-
most every year during the warmer-water times of summer and fall.