Great White Shark in captivity and endangerment
Quote from Jaws...
Hooper: Well, this is not a boat accident! And it wasn't any propeller; and it wasn't any coral reef; and it wasn't Jack the Ripper! It was a shark. |
All attempts to keep a great white shark in captivity prior to August 1981 lasted 11 days or less. However, that month a great white broke previous records by lasting 16 days in captivity at Sea World San Diego before being released into the wild.
In 1984, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California housed its first great white, which died after 10 days.
In July 2003, Monterey researchers captured a small female and kept it in a large, netted pen off Malibu for five days, where they had the rare success of getting the shark to feed in captivity before it was released.
It was not until September 2004 that the aquarium made history by becoming the first aquarium in the world to place a great white on long-term exhibit.
The young female, who was caught off the coast of Orange County, was kept in the aquarium's massive 1 million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit for 198 days before her successful release back to the wild in March 2005.
She was tracked for 30 days after her release.
On August 31, 2006 the aquarium introduced a second shark to the Outer bay exhibit. The juvenile male was caught outside Santa Monica Bay on August 17.
Probably the most famous great white to be kept in captivity was a female named "Sandy," which in August 1980 became the first and only great white to be housed at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco, California.
She was returned to the wild because she would not eat anything given to her and constantly bumped against the walls.
Although the Great White does not appear on the Federal list of Endangered
Species. The future of the great White Shark remains uncertain.
Quote from Jaws...
Mayor Vaughn: And what did you say the name of this shark is?
Hooper: It's a carcaradon carcharias. It's a Great White |
It is unclear how much a concurrent increase in fishing for great whites had to do with the decline of great white population from the 1970s to the present.
No accurate numbers on population are available, but populations have clearly declined to a point at which the great white is now considered endangered.
Their reproduction is slow, with sexual maturity occurring at about nine years of age, such that population can take a long time to rise.
In 2005, a tagged great white named Nicole was recorded swimming from South Africa to Australia and back, 22,000
kilometres round trip.
Researchers believe it may have undertaken this journey to mate, and hope studies such as this will produce more effective conservation measures.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has put the great white shark on its 'Appendix II' list of endangered species.
The shark is targeted by fishermen for its jaws, teeth, and fins, and as a game fish.
The great white shark, however, is rarely an object of commercial fishing, although its flesh is considered valuable. If casually captured (it happens for example in some tonnare in the Mediterranean), it is sold as smooth-hound shark.
Japan recently rejected the CITES publication of the species, and here it
remains legal to hunt Great Whites . They are a protected species along the
coasts of California, USA, Australia, and South Africa.
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