Another Great White at Monterey

[Ken Kurtis]

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/whiteshark/

 

[scottfiji]

The white shark went on display this morning. Penny and I were one of the first people to see it. It was pretty small, similar in size to the small galapagos sharks in the tank. Now the bluefin tuna, they were huge! Impressive! what a great aquarium....

 

[drbill]

Didn't the Aquarium learn anything from the first GWS they held?

 

[JDog]

I think they learned you can sell a lot more tickets having a "Great White Shark" on display.

 

[tankboygreg]

I think they learned you can sell a lot more tickets having a "Great White Shark" on display.

Which also means more funding for White Shark research not to mention educating more people on White Sharks.

 

[TrojanCatMan]

We dont know enough about the animal to justify keeping them in captivity! Aquariums constantly take on animals that they are not fit to keep. Some fish they have to hand feed just to keep them alive. Dont get me wrong... aquariums are really fun and benificial to our understanding of animals. I just hope they dont kill this one.

Sum of my thoughts:
The great white is a magnificent creature that we should enjoy seeing on its terms... not through glass or a cage.

 

[tankboygreg]

I just hope they dont kill this one.

They didn't kill the last one...

 

[JDog]

.......Some fish they have to hand feed just to keep them alive. .....

I think this is an incorrect statement.

In order to display a good variety of fish in an exibit. One must often times keep several speicies in closer proximity to one another than in the wild. Fishes as well as humans have several levels of agression or dominance in their enviroment. Therefore if you were to just chuck a bucket of food in your exibit, only the most aggresive fishes would eat, that is why you must "target" feed some species at the aquarium. You could learn a lot more about how these Aquariums work by visiting, in your case the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. There are hundreds of unpaid volunteers working there that would be happy to answer any of your questions.

 

[Jake]

I had the good fortune of meeting one of the guys responsible for the first white shark project, and for the continuing white shark project out of the MBA and with CSULB. I also attended a lecture on their research and their experience with the first shark. In my limited opinion, it seemed like the project was about as above board scientific as one could get. The first time around, they had very good luck with the shark and had to release it once it got too big and started to get overly aggressive. I haven't read the article linked yet, but I think such studies could be of tremendous value to the future preservation of the species. Just my $0.02.

 

[TrojanCatMan]

They didn't kill the last one...

Did I say they killed the last one? No, they let it into the wild. Don't put words in my mouth. Fact: Many attempts to keep great whites in captivity have killed the animal prematurely due to stress.