Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
know what that way was, or even if there was a correct way to handle
them. We had a lot to learn ahead of us.
Upon our return to Monterey we made preparations for our first se-
rious venture into working with tuna. Every late summer and fall,
schools of albacore tuna sweep through California waters on their mi-
gration around the North Pacific. If the water temperature along the
coast is warm, they may come as close as twenty miles from Monterey.
Such was the case during the El Niño of 1983-84. We had gone out
in our twenty-five-foot collecting boat,
Lucile,
and caught two alba-
core. It was an opportunity to find out if they could be transported in
the modest-sized holding tank on our boat. The tank turned out to be
too small and the fish didn't survive the two-hour trip back to the aquar-
ium. However, we did learn that we needed a bigger boat with larger
holding tanks.
In addition to a good-sized transport tank, we needed a large, long-
term holding tank back at the aquarium. There simply was no space
at the aquarium for a tank of this size, but our sister institution, MBARI,
twenty miles away in Moss Landing, had an old fish-packing ware-
house that they said we could use until the new exhibit wing was com-
pleted. Taking them up on their kind o¤er, we installed a thirty-eight-
foot-diameter, six-foot-deep fiberglass tank with a life-support system
of sand filters, aeration, and ozone treatment. Vertical stripes of black
tape were put all around the inside of the tank to let the fish see that
there was a wall there.
Obtaining seawater for the new forty-thousand-gallon holding tank
was a bit of a problem. Applying for coastal permits to install intake
and discharge pipes in the Bay would, we knew, be a time-consuming
bureaucratic process, one we couldn't a¤ord to embark on if we were
going to meet our schedule. Fortunately, the building was located near
the cooling water discharge pipe of the Moss Landing Pacific Gas and
Electric power station; we therefore obtained permission to pull our
seawater from their pipe and then to return our outflow water back
into it. It wasn't ideal, but it worked.
One hurdle had been taken care of with our trip to Japan. As well as
sharing their hard-earned knowledge of tuna husbandry with us, the sta¤
at Tokyo Sea Life Park had graciously loaned us three of their custom-
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