A million-gallon fishbowl - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 297

wrong with this fish when globules of oil oozed out of the muscle tis-
sue. This didn't look like any healthy sashimi we'd ever seen or would
want to eat. The fish was grossly obese. A week later another tuna keeled
over and died right in the middle of a feeding frenzy. This fish, which
also had oil in its tissues, apparently died of a heart attack from being
too fat.
It became obvious that we were feeding our fish way too much food,
as well as food that was too high in fat. Chuck Farwell began a thor-
ough investigation into the metabolism of di¤erent types of fish and
the caloric composition of the di¤erent kinds of food fish. His find-
ings allowed us to make some changes.
The first step was to put the fish on a strict diet of low-fat squid and
smelt in place of the high-energy herring and anchovies, to try to reduce
the fat they had accumulated. They also went from twice-daily feedings
to a single feeding three times a week. Sometime later we lost another
fish through an accident, and the autopsy revealed this fish was in much
better shape. The tissues looked normal and weren't oozing oil.
While these problems were being sorted out, Chuck Farwell and John
O'Sullivan came up with a scheme that would give us the seventy to
eighty tuna we needed to open the new exhibit wing. In preparation
for the following summer's collection, John set up a fifteen-foot-diameter
holding tank on the dock of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's
Marine Ship Facility in San Diego Bay. The plan (which optimistically
assumed a successful trip) was to catch forty-five tuna with the Shogun,
fifteen of which would be loaded directly into the truck transport tank
and driven to Monterey, while the thirty remaining fish would be housed
temporarily in the holding tank on the Scripps dock. After the first
batch was unloaded, the truck and transport tank—which by now had
been christened the “Tunabago”—would return for the second batch,
and finally the third. Meanwhile, the Shogun would head back out to
sea for a second collection.
It was an ambitious plan, and if the two collections and six truck trips
went well, we could conceivably end up with ninety tuna, giving us some
extras to keep in reserve. The tuna, plus the bonito, barracuda, and mo-
las, would be a fine collection of fish for the aquarium to open with.
The weather and the fishing were good. Although we didn't catch