Imagine an aquarium with 4.25 gallons of water weighing 2/3 of a ton with the pressure of a mile under the sea and you have the AbyssBox. Designed to display deep sea creatures, the AbyssBox is both an aquarium display device and a serious research tool, a real scientific aquarium unlike our plain old glass boxes. Reinforced with steel and with a viewing window just 10cm (4 in.) in diameter, the AbyssBox is currently on display at the Oceanopolis in Brest, France with deepwater shrimp and crabs inside.
In order to keep the deep water animals alive, the AbyssBox also has mechanisms to add food to the tank and an exchange of fresh clean water without breaking the pressure. The AbyssBox may be the most expensive nano aquarium ever built but hopefully larger, scaled-up versions of the technology inside may be used to build better and bigger deepwater display aquariums to bring unusual creatures to the surface like crinoids, fish and maybe some of those really, really cool cephalopods. [Wired Science]
