A first look at realism - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 38

These Rube Goldberg devices actually worked some of the time, but
the major drawback was that there was no fresh seawater being pumped
through; all it took was one fish to up-chuck its lunch or defecate and
everything inside died. Once on board or on shore, the fish were at
risk from the same dangers that deep-sea divers face. A fish can get the
bends if the pressure is reduced too rapidly, or it can su¤er from oxy-
gen poisoning if the oxygen concentration is too high relative to the
pressure. Eventually the whole method was abandoned, judged to be
great in theory but no good in practice. It was frustrating at the time
to concede defeat.
Three years later, biologist Dan Gotshall with the California De-
partment of Fish and Game published a paper describing the use of a
hypodermic needle to release the gases from the expanded swimblad-
ders of rockfishes brought up from the deep. Now, this was more like
it; the idea was so simple, with no complicated decompression equip-
ment to contend with. It quickly became the universal method for deal-
ing with expanding swimbladders of all kinds of fish, from rockfish to
butterflyfish and even, as I would later have occasion to find out, flash-
light fish from the Indian Ocean.
DESIGN FOR DINERS
Designing realistic exhibits has been an inspiring challenge through-
out my career. I remember an especially unusual situation years ago
when I applied at Sea World lessons I had learned during my Marineland
days. The park was building a fancy restaurant on Mission Bay, and of
course, as part of Sea World, it had to include striking aquariums. I
designed four totally di¤erent tanks: two behind the bar, one in the
cocktail lounge, and a large one that separated two banquet rooms.
Consider the challenge of installing functional aquariums in an op-
erating restaurant. Somehow it worked out, but neither the aquarium
nor the restaurant sta¤s were too happy with their work spaces. The
occasional saltwater flood on the floor irked the restaurant sta¤ for some
reason, while the bus boys feeding the fish leftover cheese and dinner
rolls irritated us aquarists.
The cocktail lounge housed a six-thousand-gallon aquarium for fishes