Attorney Installs Shark Tank in Office

[January 03, 2008]  BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) -- It started out as a joke -- a lawyer putting a shark tank in his office. "I said, 'What would it take to put a shark in a lawyer's office?'" and it kind of took off from there, said attorney Christopher Gillette.

On Monday, a crane hoisted a 1,000-gallon aquarium up to a second-story window in Gillette's new office.

"I can't watch," Gillette said as half a dozen workers guided the roughly 8-foot-long, 4-foot-wide and 4-foot-tall tank through the window.

Gillette plans to fill the saltwater tank with a miniature marine ecosystem, including at least two sharks -- a blacktip reef shark being flown in from the Caribbean Sea and a bamboo shark that will be hatched from eggs in the tank.

To support the tank's weight, engineers and architects reinforced the floor joists and created other structural supports. When completed, the tank and stand will weigh around eight tons.

Gillette is purchasing the tank from Crystal Clear Aquariums, a Bozeman company that installs and maintains salt water aquariums.

Tanner Young, company owner, said he will spend up to a month readying the tank for the fish. The tank will be hooked up to a computer monitoring system that can automatically notify Young of changes in water quality or other problems.

When the project is complete, people can watch video from wireless cameras inside the tank at http://www.cjgillettelaw.com/ and http://www.ccaqua.com/.

Gillette also plans to install four other fish tanks in the new office -- two 72-gallon tanks and two 46-gallon tanks containing coral reefs, star fish and sea urchins.

Gillette, who practices family law, said the tank serves more than an aesthetic purpose.

There's something calming about fish that he hopes will help ease his clients who are often dealing with high stress situations such as divorce or child custody.

"I wanted to create an atmosphere where people would feel relaxed and be comfortable discussing very personal issues," Gillette said. "People seem to be comfortable with fish."

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Information from: Bozeman Daily Chronicle, http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/

[Associated Press]

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