The Monterey Bay Aquarium got a new great white shark yesterday.
For the sixth time since 2004, our husbandry team has successfully brought a juvenile great white shark from the wild to temporarily reside in the million-gallon Open Sea exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He was collected by our team in a purse seine net in waters near Malibu, and arrived at the Aquarium August 31. The young shark, a four-foot, seven-inch male, weighs 43.2 pounds...
We'll keep you updated through our Facebook page and this blog, so you can find out how he’s doing. Our number one concern is his health and well-being (and, of course, that of the other animals with whom he will share the water during his stay).You can also check on him yourself when you visit the Aquarium, or on our live HD web cam!
I'm watching the webcam now and I can see ole Jaws swim by pretty frequently. Every few minutes the voice of a docent drops in to relate a few great white facts as well.
The cam says feeding time is coming up at 11 a.m. If that's too much for you, you can probably get a similar feeling from reading about the San Francisco mayoral race.
Update 11:05 a.m. I spoke with the aquarium's communications director, Ken Peterson, who told me the shark is less than a year old. He said it will be in the exhibit "as long as it tells us by its behavior that it's doing well. We've had five great white sharks in the past; they've been with us for as long as six-and-a-half months and as little as 11 days. In the case of the animal that was here for 11 days, it fed only one time, and we decided it was best to get it back to the wild."
I hit him this penetrating question any 6th grader would have been proud to ask: How come the shark doesn't eat those other fish I see swimming around the tank in the webcam?