Great White Shark goes on exhibition in aquarium

Adam Khor

The world-famous Monterey Bay aquarium is once again displaying a great white shark (this time a young male). Since great white sharks don´t adapt well to captivity, he will probably be only for a brief time in the aquarium before being released.
To date, only six great white sharks have been kept in captivity, all of them in the Monterey Bay aquarium.



The shark is kept in the huge Open Sea tank where hammerhead sharks, sea turtles, sunfish and tuna are also displayed; there's a live webcam in the aquarium's website, in case u wanna take a look.

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/efc_opensea/open_sea_cam.aspx

Sid_Justice

Don't approve of this. almost as bad as having a orca in a water-zoo

steddyeddy

There isnt much animals that do well in captivity but relatively speaking anything with a metabolic rate as high as a great white is going to find confining spaces tough to say the least. I think its quite cruel.

Adam Khor

steddyeddy wrote: »

There isnt much animals that do well in captivity but relatively speaking anything with a metabolic rate as high as a great white is going to find confining spaces tough to say the least. I think its quite cruel.

Agreed. Keeping an open sea animal in a tank is as cruel as keeping a flying animal in a cage. It's just not right. I love seeing sharks in the aquarium; they are beautiful animals and I can stare at them all day. But of course, I would much prefer to see them in the ocean, where they belong.

The guys at the Monterey Bay aquarium say that great whites are kept there sometimes for "educational" purposes, but I'm a little bit concerned that, since they've been succesful in keeping great whites alive six times now, this may start a trend of capturing these animals for aquariums in the future.

snowstreams

I saw this earlier in the week alright.
The tank is supposed to be around million gallons, which sounds big but still means that if its 10m deep it would only take up an area about 20m*19m*10m. That doesnt seem like much space for a great white at all, even if the shark is only 1.5m long.
Having said that, I don't think its possible to see a great white in the wild at all, unless of course you used chumming to attract a great white to a cage.

Adam Khor

snowstreams wrote: »

Having said that, I don't think its possible to see a great white in the wild at all, unless of course you used chumming to attract a great white to a cage.

Oh, it is possible, if you know where to look By the way, recently some dudes from an Australian adventure trip announced that playing music seems to work very well when it comes to attract great white sharks.
According to them, the music that attracts them the most is rock, and their favorite is AC/DC, although they also said that it's not really the songs, but the particular vibrations of the music that attracts the sharks.
The interesting part is that sharks that are attracted by the music seem more curious than hungry/aggressive, suggesting that they are driven by curiosity rather than a predatory impulse.

Right now, the shark-watching company is encouraging customers to take their own CDs and see if the sharks are attracted by other different kinds of music.

snowstreams

That sounds great. I'll have to put that on my to do list if I'm in Australia. I've done whale watching before but never heard of shark "watching" as such. Just the cage diving in south Africa trip.

Adam Khor

snowstreams wrote: »

That sounds great. I'll have to put that on my to do list if I'm in Australia. I've done whale watching before but never heard of shark "watching" as such. Just the cage diving in south Africa trip.

Lucky guy. I've seen dolphins and had a brief glimpse of a feeding shark years ago but I've never seen a whale and I dream of cage diving with both sharks and crocodiles XD

snowstreams

I was extremely lucky with my whale watching experience. I was canoeing in Hawaii in a small group and we managed to find 3 humpback whales. one of them swam right under my canoe and looked me in the eye. It was an experience I'll never ever forget.

Adam Khor

I can imagine! May I ask what was it like, when u looked at its eye? What did you feel/think?

snowstreams

Adam Khor wrote: »

I can imagine! May I ask what was it like, when u looked at its eye? What did you feel/think?

Sorry, I fell asleep last night after my last message
The 3 whales I saw was a male escort, a female and her yearling calf.
It was the female that stared straight at me, I felt that she was checking me out to see what I was thinking. She was very relaxed and seemed to know that we were just as curious about her as she was about us.
It was my most amazing wildlife experience, I was as excited as a child for the rest of my Hawaii trip after that!