Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the real world. After a while, they ignored the mirrors and their own
reflections.
Although the exhibit was a vast improvement, it still didn't look like
reality, for a simple reason: it lacked motion. What was missing was a
wave periodically crashing into it, just like real surf does in the pools
at the shore. Manually dumping a bucket of water into the tank pro-
duced the right e¤ect, but I couldn't keep doing that all day long. I
needed an automatic bucket dumper.
Stealing a stainless steel bucket from the mammal trainers, I had a
welder attach a pivot point to each side of the bucket just below its
centerline. When the bucket was empty it hung there upright in nor-
mal bucket fashion, but when it was filled with water it became top-
heavy and flipped over, dumping the water. Once empty, it righted it-
self and was ready to fill again. All we needed now was to suspend the
bucket securely over the tide pool exhibit near the front window and
supply it with a continuous flow of seawater.
Once installed, it looked terrific. The bucket tipped, the wave crashed
down, and the tank turned white with foamy bubbles. The bucket righted
itself and began filling again. The bubbles cleared quickly, and then you
could see fishes swimming near the end of the long rocky channel. What
people didn't realize was that the fish they saw in the back of the tank
were reflections of the same ones they saw in the front. Only occasion-
ally, when a sea star crawled up a mirror, was the trickery revealed.
The combination of the periodic wave action, the rockwork, and the
two mirrors made a most e¤ective tide pool exhibit.
FARNSWORTH BANK EXPERIENCE
By the late 1950s the popular (if rather corny) television show Sea Hunt,
starring Lloyd Bridges, made the sight of a scuba diver less of an odd-
ity than it was in 1952; scuba diving began to catch on, and a number
of dive shops started up along the coast of California. These were not
the first, though. Back in 1953, twin brothers Bob and Bill Meistrell
had launched a dive shop called Dive n' Surf in the Santa Monica Bay
town of Redondo Beach. They made the very first quality wet suits,
and all of us Marineland divers had our suits custom made by them.
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