Okay, I can’t give you dates on this, but we had a fellow there by the name of Lewis Reimers who had come up. He started back at the aquarium around 33 or 34 when the world’s fair was on. Started out as a night janitor. In those days, the… Read More
He’s the guy who got all the collecting aquarium put together and made sure that it was in good shape for the next year. And he was collector when I got there, and I worked with him getting all his collecting equipment ready. I think that was my first trip… Read More
Okay, we’ll talk about that in a minute. Captain, we gonna take a little break. Oh, finally. Tell me when you’re ready. We’re all set. All set. Read More
Oh, there’s a lot of challenges. (laughs) Every day I think there was a challenge. People would, I made a couple of big mistakes. We had a tank with alligator garfish in it, and that’s all was in there. And I thought we need a little more action in this… Read More
I just was so anxious to get something in there. Read More
And what was kind of the evolution after that, of moving up?… Read More
“What do we do?” He says, “Well, just filter it through charcoal.” So I said, “Okay.” So went to the chief engineer, we had a big tank that we carried we used to call them in those days jewfish, which now you can’t say, you got to call them giant… Read More
And we built a big charcoal filter with charcoal about the size of wheat grain and we pumped the water through that, came out like artesian spring water. Well, the problem was eventually those little tiny rice grains of charcoal, they went through also, and as they were pumped through… Read More
Were there other challenges in exhibiting fish?… Read More
And the chief engineer said, “That sounds okay.” So, end result of that was we hired a barge. I think it was the John I. Hay barge line. And they had a barge down in New Orleans that was used to haul molasses. So we used that, and we went… Read More
The inside of the barge was rusty from the saltwater in it that time. And I thought, oh, this is trouble. And then all of the plankton in it died off. And the aquarium smelled like a sewer plant from all of that. And I thought there goes my job. Read More
He was one of the aquarist that we hired. You mentioned saltwater. Read More
Can you tell me a little bit about bringing up water from the Gulf of Mexico?… Read More
(laugh) Well, originally the water was brought in, in tank cars from Key West, Florida. Railroad tank cars, in those days, the railroad ran all the way from Miami to Key West. And so tank cars were sent down there, and they were in a constant shuttle. There’d be four… Read More
Then later on, as you know, I mentioned before, they did make up some artificial water, according to that German formula, but they didn’t need as much water because of the one gallery that was closed down completely for so long. But after that was opened up, then we needed… Read More
How’d you figure out their diet needs?… Read More
I think it was just sort of a hit miss. We had absolutely no research on what was suitable for what animals. And I guess, quite frankly, in those days, it was easier to replace them than trying to keep them alive. That was the attitude back then. We fed… Read More
The fellows that were there when I were there had absolutely no aquarium training at all. They did what they were told. We had one fellow who was a retired Mason, one guy who was a retired Iceman, a fellow who worked at, excuse me, I’m having a brain spasm,… Read More
Finally, I think they saw they could do this. And this is just before the Korean War, and the windows slammed again because we were in another war period. We weren’t essential. So after the Korean War, then finally, I guess they had enough money salted away by this time… Read More
And then eventually later on in the seventies, we redid the whole water circulation system with PVC. The original system was all lead, and that eventually got clogged up with debris and salt and crustacean. So that was the start of bringing the aquarium out of its doldrums. And then… Read More