Has anyone succeeded in making one?

For the observation and study of deep sea fishes.

mollwollfumble said:

Has anyone succeeded in making one?

For the observation and study of deep sea fishes.

Looks the answer is yes, but not many. The only scientific papers are about mid-ocean-ridge crabs, shrimps and worms. Perhaps some for fish.

“Undersea worms. Tiny worms, known scientifically as Paralvinella sulfincola, chose water heated to 50 degrees Celsius. They built a special pressurised aquarium, with a heating element on one end and a cooling element on the other.”

“A fish from 2300m below the surface deeper than any other caught live fish. Unfortunately for these particular sea creatures, the pressurised aquarium hasn’t been invented yet”

“Will study the behaviour of flat fishes swimming in a large pressurised aquarium.”

“The shrimp Rimicaris exoculata dominates several hydrothermal vent ecosystems of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In-vivo experiments were carried out in a pressurised aquarium”.

From France “Deep sea fauna are adapted to high pressure, and the sampling process often proves lethal. Therefore pressure equipment is needed to maintain and study live animals at the lab. Four pressure instruments, were designed in our group : The IPOCAMP pressure aquarium, designed for experimental work onboard oceanographic ships. 7 such prototypes are today available to the scientific community, in different institutions (France, Portugal, United Kingdom, Canada). The PERISCOP pressure cell, designed for isobaric sampling from the deep. The BALIST pressure transfer aquarium, designed to receive and study samples collected at pressure with PERISCOP, with no pressure loss. The AbyssBox pressure aquarium, designed for long term maintenance and public exhibition of deep fauna, at Océanopolis Brest.”

I like the idea of public exhibition of deep sea fauna.

“Abyssbox, a 640 kg pressurised aquarium containing 16.5 L of flowing seawater, hosted 12. M. fortunata shrimp and 5 S. mesatlantica crabs”. “EXTREME FISHBOWL Researchers specially built an aquarium to house deep-sea creatures. The six-inch-thick plastic viewing window can withstand pressure of 200 times that found at sea level at Oceanopolis.

The pressure at 2300 m would be about 23 MPa, which is not much less than the compressive strength of standard grade concrete.

Designing a large tank with windows to withstand such pressures would be an interesting exercise.

As the saying goes, there’s no problem that can’t be solved with cubic money.

OTOH, an aquarium is a place where there is air (with the humans who wish to observe) on one side of a transparent barrier and water (with the marine life to be looked at) on the other.

So isn’t a diving bell like a pressurised aquarium?

Maybe approach it from a different direction, what actually happens to the fish at lower pressures, is it the transition that kills them, in which case they might be able to be decompressed like divers at depth, or is it they cannot breath or other issues.

AwesomeO said:

Maybe approach it from a different direction, what actually happens to the fish at lower pressures, is it the transition that kills them, in which case they might be able to be decompressed like divers at depth, or is it they cannot breath or other issues.

They effectively explode, because they’ve evolved to live at that great depth (and high pressure).

Imagine a human jumping out of a space craft well away from any atmosphere, without a pressurised space-suit to protect them.

Michael V said:

AwesomeO said:

Maybe approach it from a different direction, what actually happens to the fish at lower pressures, is it the transition that kills them, in which case they might be able to be decompressed like divers at depth, or is it they cannot breath or other issues.

They effectively explode, because they’ve evolved to live at that great depth (and high pressure).

Imagine a human jumping out of a space craft well away from any atmosphere, without a pressurised space-suit to protect them.

Perhaps, but not necessarily. There may have been cases where deep sea animals have been decompressed for a short while and then recompressed. I have heard of two such attempts that failed.

Cookiecutter sharks are infamous for making journeys from the deep sea (during the day) to the surface every night and back down again. “They inhabit deep waters below 1,000 m during the day and migrate into surface waters at night”.