Great White Shark on display!

Hi Sea Fans!

Interesting news has broken in the aquarium world, read the summary below to find out more:

MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM PUTS ITS 6TH YOUNG GREAT WHITE SHARK ON EXHIBIT

A Great White Shark.     Photo: Hermanus Backpackers

For the sixth time, the Monterey Bay Aquarium (www.montereybayaquarium.org) has a young great white shark on exhibit. He was brought to Monterey from Malibu on Wednesday night (August 31), just 13 days after he was collected by aquarium staff in waters off southern California near Marina del Rey.

The young shark, a 122cm male weighing 19.6 kg, was collected by aquarium staff and was quickly transferred to a more than 15-million-litre ocean holding pen off Malibu, where he remained for almost two weeks. Aquarium staff observed him swimming comfortably and documented him feeding in the pen before he was taken to Monterey and placed in the 3-million-litre Open Sea exhibit.

In 2004, the first female white shark was exhibited in Monterey as part of the aquarium’s Open Sea exhibit for 6 ½ months and was seen by more than a million people. In follow-up surveys, visitors reported coming away with a deeper understanding of the need to protect white sharks and their ocean homes as a result of seeing the shark on exhibit.  In the wild, great white shark numbers are decreasing worldwide, partly because they’re slow to reproduce and because of growing fishing pressure. White sharks are protected in California and other U.S. coastal waters, as well as in South Africa, Australia, Mexico and other nations. Their fearsome reputation has made them a target of trophy hunters and the curio trade.  This means that educating the public and research is vitally important!


Since 2002, the aquarium has allocated more than $1 million toward its studies of adult and juvenile great white sharks – research unrelated to the effort to put a white shark on exhibit. Visit www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/whiteshark.aspx for detailed information about the aquarium’s Project White Shark program.

So Sea Fans, let me know what you think about this.

Cheers
Abby
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