American Fisheries Society 257 



done with the camera water-box to prove that for scientific 

 purposes its limits were such as to hardly warrant further 

 experimentation in its then existing form. I returned with 

 renewed interest to aquarium photography, with the belief 

 that for all practical purposes one fish in a tank was worth 

 a great many at large in the ocean when it came to securing 

 photographs. 



Having obtained satisfactory results in my work on still 

 aquatic life mounted on glass screens, my next step was 

 with a view to securing pictures of such interesting marine 

 life as our tropical coral reefs afforded when they were alive 

 and swimming about in the aquarium. Little by little, by 

 patient experiment, I arrived at the methods which, if 

 carefully followed, make it possible to photograph almost 

 anything of reasonable size that lives in the sea, and, in 

 most cases, to do so with an instantaneous exposure. The 

 cutting down of the time factor made the motion picture 

 possible, and I ^m very happy to be able to show you as a 

 fitting conclusion to the paper, reporting as it does many 

 months of experimentation, what I believe to be the first 

 motion picture of tropical sea life that has been secured. 



A word of explanation of the way in which the picture 

 was taken will suffice after what has been said concerning 

 the principle involved and the methods employed in aquatic 

 photography. Light and yet more light on the object if 

 properly managed is the key to success in this class of 

 work. Experiments in the sunlight were satisfactorv, 

 experiments with white reflectors were better, and experi- 

 ments on the sand by the seashore on a bright day were 

 even more so. 



I had constructed of redwood a large temporary aquarium 

 three by five feet, with twelve inches between the plate glass, 

 on the general lines before indicated. Since the weight of 

 the -water it contained was well over one thousand pounds 

 and the empty tank was all four men could lift, the import- 

 ance of mounting the aquarium upon a firm pedestal was 

 well appreciated. A stout plank floor was built ui^on tlie 



