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Aquarium of the Pacific’s newly acquired tiger shark is a tough customer

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Tiger sharks are ‘consummate scavengers, with excellent senses of sight and smell and a nearly limitless menu of diet items,’ according to National Geographic. Those in the know even sometimes refer to the indiscriminate eaters as ‘wastebaskets of the sea,’ and they’ve been known to eat items as unappetizing as boat cushions and license plates. If you believe their reputation, these creatures will eat just about anything.

Not so for the Aquarium of the Pacific‘s recent addition, our colleague Louis Sahagun reports.

The aquarium is new to caring for tiger sharks; in fact, nearly all aquariums are, since the species is rarely kept in captivity (only two other aquariums in the U.S. have tiger sharks in residence). But the shark in question, a 5-foot-long juvenile female, was born in captivity (her mother was accidentally caught in a fisherman’s net in Taiwan and, soon after, gave birth to a litter of live-born young), and ‘because it was young and small, we felt we had a reasonable chance of success,’ Perry Hampton, the aquarium’s director of animal husbandry, explained. ‘If nothing else, we could push back the boundaries of knowledge about caring for this species in aquariums.’

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The aquarium took the plunge, and the shark arrived there in February. Since then, dealing with her has been nothing short of a challenge.

She’s kept in the aquarium’s 10,000-square-foot Shark Lagoon exhibit, but staff have created a sequestered pen within the lagoon for her, where she’ll swim alone until she grows large enough to hold her own against the adult sharks that will be her tank-mates.

And so much for ‘wastebasket of the sea’; this shark has developed a notoriety for pickiness about what she eats. From Sahagun’s story:

In the aquarium’s stainless steel kitchen, where staffers spend mornings prepping meals for more than 10,000 marine creatures large and small, [Assistant Curator Steve Blair] compared his relationship with the tiger shark to ‘a dance routine.’’Some days she won’t eat,’ he said. ‘Other days she goes on benders, feasting only on one type of food. Her tastes change from one day to the next. The tricky part is figuring out what thing triggers her hunger on a given day.’ The tiger shark is scheduled to eat about half a pound of meat a day. But its menu has expanded to include more than 30 potential offerings, including mackerel, snapper, squid, ono, fresh water eels, chicken, flank steak, quail and $20-a-pound lobster tail.

We should all be so lucky. In a single day last month, Blair and his staff tried feeding the shark
restaurant-grade ahi tuna, mahi-mahi, halibut and shrimp; she turned up her nose at each in turn. And, Blair says, his work with his trickiest charge has an effect on his life outside the aquarium.

‘If she’s having a tough day and not eating,’ he told Sahagun, ‘I’ll probably be kind of grumpy when I get home that night.’

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Fortunately for both Blair and his tiger-shark charge, some days are better than others, food-wise, and staffers are gradually coming to understand her mood swings (they say they can gauge her emotional state by the way she’s swimming). Shortly after Sahagun’s visit, she was eating steelhead trout like a champ.

Sundays through Sept. 6, Aquarium of the Pacific is offering visitors a special discount as part of its ‘Shark Summer’ celebration. Admission fees, normally $23.95 for adults, are reduced to $11.95 beginning at 5 p.m., and visitors can hang out with the sharks (as well as the aquarium’s other sea life) until 10 p.m.

-- Lindsay Barnett

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