By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

If you have not heard about the sex-crazed mahimahi in Our Honolulu, pay close attention. If you have heard, pay close attention anyway because this year is the 100th birthday of the Waikiki Aquarium, where sex-crazed mahimahi hang out.

The Waikiki Aquarium was the first in the United States to successfully raise mahimahi in captivity. I learned this way back in 1985 from

fish scientist Sid Kraul, who said: "The common belief is that mahimahi in the open ocean breed in the full moon. But in the aquarium, females spawn every other day and the male does it every day.

"There's a theory about why mahimahi keep dying in aquariums. Actually, nobody knows. The theory is that they are having too much sex. We're proving this is not true. So far, our male mahimahi is doing all right after doing it every day for two months.

We now believe that the mahimahi in captivity die from pollution caused by sperm in the tank water, not from too much sex."

Fish scientists have traveled here from around the world to learn how to raise mahimahi in captivity.

I'll admit that a giant clam on exhibit in Waikiki isn't all that glamorous. It just sits there with its shell open. But when you think about how it takes a construction crane to move one, a giant clam takes on a whole new meaning.

Then there was Crock-a-bye-baby. When former aquarium director Bruce Carlson was a graduate student in 1983, he brought back a cuddly, 5-year-old crocodile from Palau. That was before capturing crocodiles became illegal. The crocodile grew and grew until it snapped at the aquarium director on a "Let's Go Fishing" TV show.

The director said, "When a crocodile gets big enough to eat the crocodile keeper, it's time for him to go." Crock-a-bye-baby was shipped off to a crocodile farm in Texas. You know where that crocodile is now? "He got so big and mean, they sent him to Orlando, Florida," Carlson said. "Now he's 13 feet long, weighs 1,000 pounds and is billed as the most ferocious reptile in America."

Our aquarium is famous around the world. It's where the humuhumunukunukuapua'a was chosen as the state fish. It's the first place on the globe where people got to look at jellyfish instead of getting stung by them. The jellyfish exhibit is like an underwater wonderland.

To think it all started because the Honolulu Rapid Transit Co. back in 1904 wanted to get people to ride the street car from Our Honolulu all the way out to Waikiki. No wonder, it was three miles and nothing but sand and mosquitoes when you got there. That's how history is made.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.