Aquarium for Scientific Use

[jpsp]

Hello all!

I'm a researcher at Stanford University and am planning a scientific sailing expedition (down the Western coast of the Americas) to help fill some Covid induced gaps in coral reef monitoring.

We are making it a Zero Carbon research cruise on a small monohull (Catalina 36) loaded with solar panels. However, one of the more difficult technical challenges is adding a holding tank for specimen. We are considering either one or two aquariums to install onboard to temporarily hold specimens (fish and/or coral) that we will process or observe.

I know there have been threads here about aquariums, but most of the responses were discouraging the idea because it was silly or not worth it, however, given that we'll need one for very legitimate purposes, I was hoping I could stimulate a more productive discussion on the topic other than discouragement. Thanks!

Any ideas or experience that could help with this would be awesome! I'm especially worried about:
-balancing such a small boat with heavy tanks
-closing off the tanks so they don't spill
-electrical use of such a system (needs to be able to hold things for at least a few weeks, so I'll need filtration)

[Calif.Ted]

Most such vessels use some sort of live well or bait tank, aquariums imply filters, water chem, etc. Large bait tank just uses a bilge pump to circulate the ocean water your specimens came from. Some just float in the water like a trash can full of holes to allow water circulation.
Bait Tanks| Baitwells | KeepAlive

[gamayun]

Oooh, need crew? Just kidding. Sounds like a fantastic trip. I used to work in the biology lab at FSU helping with genetics studies involving the raising of lots of fish in lots of aquaria. The best thing to do is make your own out of plexiglass. Sorta like a live well, but something you can see through would be better. Don't use glass for all the obvious reasons. Also, if you keep a tight lid on it while under sail, the water and fish should not slosh too badly. You could set up a system that pumps water in and overflows to a seacock. Maybe turn the pump system off at night to make sure the seacock never gets plugged by a dead fish at 3 AM. At 7 pounds per gallon, it's best to find a place in the middle of the boat and as low as possible. Can a dinette be repurposed for this? All sorts of neat ideas come to mind. Good luck!! Please post back on the results and the trip

[jimbunyard]

The immediate questions that come to mind are what specifically are you planning to keep in them, what size you want/need (minimum/maximum), and do the specimens require sunlight to survive, or be viable for your purposes, in the time frame designated?

[nwdiver]

Look for a portable bait tank you can setup and run when you need it, otherwise a good one can be used for dry storage on deck until needed...... just curious why would you hold anything for several weeks???

[ChrisJD]

You might try reaching out to Bob Steneck, who did a survey of Caribbean corals on his sailboat a few years ago. I don’t think he had an aquarium onboard, but I’d bet any money that he thought about the issue at the time and may have more useful suggestions.

Antilles 2013 - 2014

[Tetepare]

First, I'd say pay attention to past "discouraging" input. We live in a world where the Devil's Advocate is often seen as Negative Nancy, and not a team player; I cannot count the times I've observed "positive group think" move a project that was doomed from day one.


You have identified two main dilemmas to resolve: weight/ balance and power. There is also a safety issue.



You can start from either direction: calculating what is reasonably possible, or calculating what you'll need based on what aquarium capacity you want.


Without knowing the power of your panels and batteries (which you also better consider), or the aquarium capacity and filtration, I can only base on a quick anecdote:



My 6' long 125 gallon would fit on my starboard berth. It weighs about 200lbs, and the water weighs about 1000lb, for a total of 1200lb. That's a lot of weight on one side of the boat. If you balance it with an equivilent aquarium on the other side, you now have 2400lbs in the boat, which is 16% of the displacement of the boat. Performance will certainly suffer; I can't say about safety considering the weight alone.


Then what size filtration/ RO/ etc do you need? That could be another 4' or 6' each, where do they go?



And of course, power. A 1000gph pump draws roughly 100W. Lights, if required, maybe another 50W per aquarium...plus RO, etc.


Then there's the safety issue- how to you secure the aquarium(s)?



First, using my example, I assure you my Catalina internal structure isn't safe enough to simply set a 1200lb aquarium on the settee. That would have to be reinforced.


And it would have to be fixed in case of heel/ roll- and done right. Or even rollover? I can't imagine what would happen with a 6' long aquarium flying across the cabin in a rollover.


I'm not saying no, I'm saying put your engineering hat on.


ETA: The easiest way to start is a benchmark.



First, you probably already have scuba tanks and compressor on board; know where they go and power requirements.


Then, pick an aquarium size, and how many. Eyeball it. Would they even fit, along with the filtration and RO? If maybe, you know what filtration, RO, lighting power requirements are.



Compare your estimated requirements to the output and storage of panels and batteries. How far off are you? That will give you a feasibility ballpark.

[nwdiver]

Get a portable 30 gal bait tank, put in the cockpit when in use plumb the intake to something already installed like the saltwater intake in the galley run the output into a cockpit drain, been there done that in the PNW for an intro to marine critters for school kids,

[Crusty Joker]

nwdiver has good advice. Your situation is used daily on vessels all over the world. Nothing new... Congrats on being at Stanford. Rickets and Steinbeck Country... American Flyer.
If I am available I want to crew. Destinations? You will not be able to hold specimens easily for long periods of time on a small vessel, so have realistic expectations. I doubt most sensitive creatures will endure much longer than 12 to 24 hours. In your situation expect that you will need to collect your data quickly. For some creatures in some conditions, you may be able to tow a floating small "pen" aquatic chicken coup if you can keep the sides open and keep it from rolling and twisting your tow cable. I suggest that you consider taking water samples and ask for support from Martek in the bay area. You might like to take surface and some subsurface samples but keep it basic and simple. I have worked as a marine tech for USC years ago and been out on deck in total blackness trying to box core at over 800 feet in 80 knot winds while the lead investigator was attending a cocktail party on shore looking for money... Every one was doing the duty but some are appreciated more than others. Also look for support from GIS folks at ESRI... You may want to invite my cohort who has PhD in benthic zoology and lives in Kerla, India. Wish you good voyage.
AnEcoScape creator, supporter of near shore enhancement for habitat expansion in urban and impacted areas like Santa Monica Bay and the Southern California Coast.

[Montanan]

If you are only holding the specimens for a short while before you complete your scientific protocols the easiest means of maintaining their survival is to keep them in the ocean by floating a towed submerged container or a series of containers if the species need to be kept isolated from each other. The containers can be of net mesh with hoops, or fixed solid structures. The mesh style are wonderful due to their collapsibility for storage on deck. The solid structures end up being like crab traps and one simply can't carry many aboard a boat which deck is not specifically crafted to stack and rack them. Use heavy duty elastic eco-friendly mooring rode if you intend to tow them so as to take up shock loading, e.g., if the boat surfs down a swell. The containers will each act like small drogues and will string behind the slowly moving craft. Slowly could be the correct adjective depending on how large they are and how many are strung in series. If you are dealing with just small critters and small numbers then small holding tanks will suffice for short durations, e.g., a few hours or perhaps overnight. A key to such research is to not collect more specimens than one can readily process in a short time, especially if you are inclined to be a good steward and provide for research under catch and release protocols. Been there done that during three years of Marine Biology classes in high school, many long weekends out on the ocean, bay or in tidal marshes, pools and shorelines. On land, at school, we had very large saltwater aquariums most made of used large chest style commercial refrigerators / freezers 6, 8, 10, 12 feet in length, and up to three feet deep, to keep the water temperature cool, including ones that had provisions for providing for artificial tides and / or frequent shore wave actions to simulate tide pools, those required elaborate separate storage pumping volumes and timed release mechanisms or reverse pumping. The real challenge was in trying to keep the proper sources of nutrition for the very wide spectrum of critters and fauna. And of course if to be held for considerable period of time, in our case months, beginning at the start of the school year until the end of the school year with release for the summer break, there is the need for frequent changes of the water, for land based research typically involves loads of hauling from the ocean or from a brackish water source, such as the Delta, but on a boat one just supplies from what floats the boat. We had specialized transport truck with a multichambered, climate controlled tank to separate the critters from each other during the transit back to the school's laboratory and to haul newly sourced water. We consider such rig the second driver's training vehicle for us youngsters and newbie drivers, considerably larger than the school's drivers' training fleet of cars.

Large critters or fauna require large volumes and that can't be readily accommodated inside a hull of a small boat, especially a non-commercial craft such as a recreational sailboat. There would be days when we would catch hundreds of sharks in S.F. Bay, using 100 hook lines set between buoys, rapidly surveying them and releasing unless they were severely injured or dead, e.g. half eaten by another shark, or hooked harshly. It is important to have adequate distance of line between each baited hook so as to be able to keep only one fish raised on deck at a time and keep the next in line fish in the water while one dehooks and surveys the landed fish. As I recall the most sharks caught on one 100 hook line was 95 and that took considerably longer than normal to land and tend to each one. If it was to be common that such large percentage of hooks were acquiring fish we would have gone to fewer hook line sets so as to minimize the time spent on hook by the captured fish. So keep such in mind when you deploy, one can always couple series of small hook lines together to deploy more baited hooks in a longer set if the biting is not adequate to keep one busy upon timely periodic retrieval. We tried to keep the time between deployment and full retrieval below one hour. Generally not requiring more than about two minutes of time on deck for a team to dehook and examine, weigh, measure, etc. The damaged ones would be set aside to be autopsied and biopsied at the end of the day, kept in plastic trash bins full of seawater. 90%+ were returned after catching; sometimes one would re catch the same bugger on the next set of 100 hook lines or even again toward the end of the same line of 100 baited hooks. Repeaters which if we noticed that it had been previously caught and surveyed would not be resurveyed, after a while one gets good at examining inside their live mouths to see if there is a fresh wound from a previous hooking. The key being to for us students to avoid being wounded yourself when removing the hook from the assortment of live sharks all the while not injuring the majestic predators.

Another scheme would be to just moor your specimen containers on their own mooring separate from your boat, either fixed to the ground by anchors or drifting and then just retrieve as needed for your research observations / samplings. That allows for your craft to move about and not be tethered to the containers. When we were collecting sharks in the S.F. Bay we would have a buoy on one end of the 100 baited hook line and another buoy on the other end of the line and just stream them off so that it would be about 250 yards long. If the tide was running hard the hook line would drift rapidly and it would be a real chase to back the boat so as to be stern too to recapture the line. One set of hook line would be collecting sharks while we would be deploying or collecting the other and sometimes the unattended line would move quite far before we could regather it. This was before one could equip such with transponder so as to maintain tracking and location so you did your best to keep visuall watch at a distance or if lucky trace it on radar, but often one just went looking for the second set knowing generally where one placed it and where it likely would be drifting. The sharks if they did not get eaten when caught on a hook or thrashed about fighting the hook upon swallowing the bait would generally be in great shape since they were in their element during the hour of so they were kept detained before collection and surveying. At times the line could become a bit of a navigational hazard so we would observe traffic and radio notice of a set's location. We tried to keep them well away from the shipping channels and if we needed to sample in the deeper water we would coordinate with the USCG as to arranging for a temporary and monitored setting, especially as to commercial traffic and / or ferry crossings. One needs to be courteous to other mariners just as one should be courteous to the specimens one collects, limiting the number, type and duration and providing for proper placement and timing of return. Think minutes or a couple of hours not many hours or days, if you wish to deal with live specimens and / or to be released specimens.

[joelhemington]

Originally Posted by jpsp

Hello all!

I'm a researcher at Stanford University and am planning a scientific sailing expedition (down the Western coast of the Americas) to help fill some Covid induced gaps in coral reef monitoring.

We are making it a Zero Carbon research cruise on a small monohull (Catalina 36) loaded with solar panels. However, one of the more difficult technical challenges is adding a holding tank for specimen. We are considering either one or two aquariums to install onboard to temporarily hold specimens (fish and/or coral) that we will process or observe.

I know there have been threads here about aquariums, but most of the responses were discouraging the idea because it was silly or not worth it, however, given that we'll need one for very legitimate purposes, I was hoping I could stimulate a more productive discussion on the topic other than discouragement. Thanks!

Any ideas or experience that could help with this would be awesome! I'm especially worried about:
-balancing such a small boat with heavy tanks
-closing off the tanks so they don't spill
-electrical use of such a system (needs to be able to hold things for at least a few weeks, so I'll need filtration)

Given that you'll need a saltwater tank, it'll need to be be rather large to control balances. At 8 lbs a gallon, tanks can be quite heavy (plus all the additional filtration needed for a saltwater tank. Who at Stanford decided that a Cal 36 would make a good research vessel? I thought you guys were supposed to be smart (Harvard of the west and all) Nothing at all wrong with that boat as a sailing vessel but when I think of research boats, my first impression is a trawler to handle the extra equipment - unfortunately trawlers run on diesel so not so green.

[nwdiver]

Inner tube from a large truck tire and a shellfish basket in the centre, tied to the side of the boat, must have a top or you may wake up to no critters and a big happy pelican floating along side waiting for dinner time......

[jimbunyard]

So --- is this 'reeeally' just a sociology experiment???

[valhalla360]

Is this a funded research study or something just decided to do...assuming you get all the permits and such, no issue if it's your own private research but something isn't adding up with using an old catalina.

If it's a formal funded research study, go talk to your fellow researchers who have already done similar studies, they can show you pictures of similar setups.

What type of specimens are you talking about?
How long will you be holding them?
Will the boat be in protected harbors while they are onboard?

[jpsp]

Wow, great stuff! Thank you everyone for this.

Lots of people seem interested in this project, so I'll provide some background. As some of you have realized, doing science from a Catalina 36 isn't normal. What's normal is giant vessels that cost millions to operate. This is an exploration of something else.

Lots of communities are unable to perform the basic reef science that they do on a regular basis to monitor their ecosystems due to Covid-19, whether that be due to funding, regulations, or otherwise.

Traditionally, ocean science is also often tainted with parachute science, manipulation of local communities, and often doesn't even coordinate with locals or ensure a flow of benefits back to the community.

This project is an exploration of an alternative way of doing science.

A lost cost, zero carbon, "zero waste", community based collaborative approach. We're reaching out to communities, academic institutions, and NGOs along our proposed cruise track to see how we can fit into their plans for their home reefs rather than make demands on how they should let us use them.

For this reason, we are trying to outfit our ship to be able to perform a variety of basic functions. Some groups will want genetic samples of corals, and some of our field sites are remote and uninhabited so we may need to keep dozens of coral specimen alive over the course of a few days while we process them. We also are looking at catching squid in the open ocean for behavioral studies and need a container to keep them in while video recording their activity (why glass would be better than some of the suggested bait tanks). Other groups may want us to collect invasive species for analysis back at their lab, which can be 2 or 3 days sail from the field sites.

We are currently building a website with our cruise track, scientific capabilities, and an open call for collaboration, so I'll post that here later in case you guys are interested.

But all of this discussion has been super helpful so far! I'm sure we'll be making lots of use of the wisdom stored on this forum for other aspects of this trip. Looking forward to learning more from you all!