Quake: Hero saved his fish after 'tidal waves' in tanks By IAN STEWARD
Sunday Star Times
05:00 12/09/2010
pic:http://static2.stuff.co.nz/1284195127/027/4120027.jpg
Twenty minutes after his chimney came crashing through his ceiling, Dave Bradshaw wasn't picking up bricks – he was throwing rare fish back into an aquarium.
The operations manager at Southern Encounter Aquarium and Kiwi House, Bradford's first thought after the big shake was the safety of his Cathedral Square tourist attraction.
He arrived 20 minutes later, in the pitch darkness, and found "tidal waves" in the 85,000-litre and 21,000-litre tanks. About a third of the water, and many of the fish, had spilled on to the floor.
Bradford worked feverishly picking up the dying fish – some up to 30cm long – and throwing them back into the tanks.
All except five survived but about 15,000 litres of water had to be mopped up.
Orana Wildlife Trust chief executive Lynne Anderson, who oversees the aquarium, said "if it wasn't for the heroic actions of Dave Bradshaw we wouldn't have had much to reopen with."
Among those saved was an exotic porcupine fish, a crowd-pleasing favourite that looks like a Japanese cartoon of a puffer fish.
Bradshaw said he arrived so quickly because there was a fear that the quake could have broken a water pipe. If it had, all the water from the tanks could have dropped into the basement.
Fortunately the pipes were sound and Bradshaw was in time to rescue the stranded fish.
But why was his first thought not his stricken house? "It's my job," he said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/canterbury-earthquake/4120170/Quake-Hero-saved-his-fish-after-tidal-waves-in-tanks
