Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
my collecting bag to become part of the newly set-up pier piling ex-
hibit. It turned out the shell contained developing eggs, which meant
my attacker was a male fringehead standing guard over them. He cer-
tainly took his task seriously and was doing an admirable job of de-
fending his future o¤spring against intruding giants like me.
Sarcastic fringeheads are remarkable-looking fish with big mouths
and little tufts on top of their heads. The males have huge mouths that
they use in dramatic displays with other males. Face-to-face, their
mouths wide open, they display to each other by exposing the bright
yellow lining of their mouths. Like the similar displays of French grunts
( Haemulon flavolineatum ) in the Caribbean, this mouth-to-mouth be-
havior settles mating and territorial disputes without actual fighting.
I'm not sure how they determine who wins, whether it's the largest
mouth or the brightest yellow lining, but somehow sarcastic fringe-
heads work out their social and territorial di¤erences peacefully. Too
bad we supposedly intelligent humans don't follow their example in
settling our disputes.
R E-CREATING NATURE
The goal of aquariums is to show visitors the world beneath the sur-
face of the sea. However, bringing that world into an aquarium intact
is nearly impossible because the animal and plant growth is usually on
rocks that weigh many tons and are virtually immovable. Neverthe-
less, I deeply wished to re-create the true underwater world in an aquar-
ium setting. Eventually I came up with a scheme—but it involved some
long-range planning.
Jerry Goldsmith and I gathered a pickup truck load of rocks from
near the shore of Palos Verdes and drove them back to Marineland. Se-
lecting from this pile, I carefully fitted them together so they lined the
walls of an empty aquarium tank like a natural jigsaw puzzle. After
making a sketch of all the pieces and how they interlocked, we took
them out to a depth of forty feet on one of the biologically rich reefs
in Marineland Cove.
The plan was to dive on them periodically and monitor the progress
of developing growth. After two or three years, when the growth on
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