Monterey Bay Aquarium puts fifth great white on exhibit
- Sentinel staff report
Posted: 08/27/2009 01:30:09 AM PDT
MONTEREY -- Monterey Bay Aquarium staff brought a young great white shark from Malibu to Monterey on Wednesday afternoon and put it on display -- the fifth time the aquarium has given the public a chance to look at the fearsome fish.
Aquarium staff collected the female 5-foot-3-inch, 80-pound great white off of Malibu on Aug. 12. It was collected with the help of a spotter plane and a commercial fishing crew using a purse seine net. It was transferred to a 4 million gallon ocean holding pen off Malibu, where it stayed for nearly two weeks. Staff observed the shark swimming comfortably and feeding in the pen nearly a dozen times before bringing it north in a 3,000-gallon "mobile life support transport vehicle," according to the aquarium. The shark is now in the million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit.
Aquarium staff hope to keep the great white on exhibit for several months in an attempt to promote stronger protection for sharks and change the public attitude about the predator.
The aquarium is only institution in the world to exhibit a white shark for more than 16 days. In 2004, the first female white shark exhibited in Monterey was part of the aquarium's Outer Bay exhibit for more than six months, and was seen by more than a million people.
Since 2002, the aquarium and its partners have collected DNA samples, tagged and tracked 26 young sharks in the wild. The four sharks previously kept at the aquarium were tagged and tracked after their release.
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