Reef Tank Quotes

If there is one indelible image from the Battle of Tarawa, it is a photo of dozens of dead Marines bobbing in the shallows just off what was called Red Beach II. I often launched my windsurfer from Red Beach II. Just twenty yards from the beach lies a rusting amtrac. At reef’s edge are the brown ribs of a ship long ago grounded, where Japanese snipers once picked off Marines wading and swimming and floating toward a beach that offered nothing better. A little farther I directed my board over the wings and fuselage of a B- 29 Liberator. Clearing the harbor entrance, I confronted the rusting carcasses of several landing vehicles. Near the beach was a Sherman tank, with children playing on the turret. The Battle of Tarawa is an inescapable part of daily life on the island.

To clean the 240,000-liter saltwater tank where reef sharks circle what is to become Germany's biggest living coral reef, a filter apparatus runs on the lower level, breaking down nitrates with an anaerobic medium. The bacteria living in this medium extract oxygen from the nitrates that result from excreted waste, and they feed on carbon obtained from alcohol. This is provided to them in the form of vodka, purchased wholesale in ten-liter containers. Pure alcohol is not necessary; the carbon content in vodka (roughly forty percent) is sufficient.