Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
beauty, is a giant kreisel for sea nettles, twenty-two feet long and ten
feet high. Shimmering comb jellies, delicate egg-yolk jellies, and ele-
gant purple-striped jellies add to the quiet wonder of this gallery.
In keeping with the theme of swimmers, John created a twenty-foot-
diameter overhead ring of endlessly swimming anchovies. This dramatic
living sculpture, the first exhibit the visitor encounters in the new build-
ing, set the mood of the Outer Bay Wing.
The mackerel is an important pelagic species in both the Pacific and
Atlantic Oceans, and we knew we had to have these fish on exhibit.
However, although they're not di‹cult to collect and they adapt
quickly to aquarium life, our past experiences with them had not been
good.
The problem with mackerel, as with many species of the open sea,
where food is scarce and patchy in distribution, is that they're geneti-
cally programmed to eat any time they see food. It's as if they don't
know when they might get their next meal—even if they're on a reg-
ular feeding schedule in an aquarium. In the past, we had displayed
mackerel in a multispecies tank. In such a situation, feeding the ani-
mals becomes a problem, especially making sure that the slower and
more deliberate eaters get their fair share. With a school of speedy mack-
erel patrolling the upper levels, much of the food never makes it to the
bottom. Meanwhile, the mackerel overeat and become grossly fat, such
that they almost waddle through the water rather than swimming
through it. But we couldn't put them on a diet without starving the
slower fish near the bottom.
The solution was to create an exhibit where the mackerel were all by
themselves. This way we could feed them only what they needed for
metabolism and growth and they would keep their sleek, streamlined
figures.
With the jellies we'd been able to simulate the limitless blue of end-
less water. To achieve that same impression with a school of constantly
swimming mackerel, John and I came up with a tank in the shape of
a racetrack or, thinking in three dimensions, an elongated bagel. In-
side the oval hole of the bagel, lights would be suspended, illuminat-
ing a translucent blue panel set just across the track from the visitor's
viewing window. As the fish swam by the window, they would be sil-
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