Are you ready for another rant?
So there!
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has killed a Great White Sharks and nobody gives a shit.Yes read that again:
they killed an endangered and fully protected Great White Shark, one of maybe (but not likely)
only 219 of California's most revered, beloved and also feared iconic marine apex predators.
Shocking!
And yet, the silence has been deafening.
No investigation, no statements by the token
Sesselfurzers and
resident researchers, no irate blog posts, no articles in the Californian media, no ABC specials -
nada de nada de nada de nada!Compare that to
this incident where somebody very likely made an honest mistake and above all, to the
total shit storm that befell Michael Domeier for
not killing a Great White and you really got to wonder,
WTF is going on there?Did I hear,
just an unfortunate accident? Well yes, maybe.
But then again, this is certainly not an isolated event.
Way back in 2005, the
Underwater Times published a series of pictures of a captive GW whose nose had been ground to a pulp by continuously bumping against the tank's window, see the picture on top.
Two years later, having obviously learned nothing or more likely,
changed nothing, they released yet another Shark with snout abrasions. Later on, a GW was released
because it was brawling with other aquarium occupants.
And now this. I read about
changes in how he was navigating, then I read that
based on the shark’s behavior and overall condition prior to release, our white shark team had every confidence that he would do well back in the wild and that the Shark
swam off looking strong.
Hmmmm...
DEMA is the place where one meets the coolest people and it just so happens that I had a chat with a prominent Shark person who just happened to have seen that very Shark in the MBA just a short while prior. The Shark was doing very badly, listlessly scraping up against the aquarium wall and then sinking back down, the way every aquarist knows dying Fish do. This was not
navigating, this was a prolonged agony and the
overall condition was appalling.
We had a long conversation about this and I asked many precise questions, so this is not just some stupid malevolent hearsay, this is a first hand witness account by somebody who knows Sharks intimately and has no agenda whatsoever in this matter, you'd be amazed if I told you his name.
From everything I can discern, that Shark was moribund and the staff quickly disposed of it so it wouldn't die in front of the public.
Now, don't get me wrong here.
The MBA folks are
good people doing excellent things for Shark conservation. Much of the incremental millions raked in by the captive GWs are being re-invested into stellar Shark research into California's GWs. and the Californian sharktivists certainly owe them for having largely funded the push for the recent Shark fin ban - and the list of achievements goes on and on, very much including their excellent
Sea Food Watch. Plus, I do respect them for having broken the news themselves, tho I did not like the vagueness and the spin.
The value of the research on the Shark whilst in captivity? Not convinced - but if
Domeier himself says it is so it may well be true, tho it is certainly not the primary reason, let alone a
necessity justifying the captive program.
Also, there are undoubtedly (controversial)
educational and conservation-related benefits in displaying charismatic megafauna in both zoos and aquariums where the animals act as important (and
very likely, highly lucrative!) ambassadors for their endangered brethren in the wild.
And finally, I'm also not at all implying that loosing a juvenile GW is in any way an ecological catastrophe or a threat to the population or what have you. Compared to the gauntlet fishery
down in Baja (and
here!) that is killing scores of juvenile YOYs this is nothing but a statistical blip.
But!
This surely cannot mean that all of what the MBA folks do is automatically above scrutiny - or does it?
This is but the latest and alas, monumental cock-up in what appears to be a long uninterrupted string of failures and I say, there must be a moment of accountability after a failure of such dimensions. And yes that includes some robust and public discussion - very much looking forward to the husbandry team's
review (of)
its procedures and protocols!
I say this.
It is glaringly obvious that GWs were never meant to be kept in aquaria and that they fare very badly there. Despite of the unquestionable successes of the husbandry team, it surely cannot be good to simply accept that the animals are regularly injured, let alone killed like in the present case. Like with
those tags, the gizmo needs to be fixed before introducing the next specimen. Yes it raises the exact same conundrums about costs vs benefits and ethics etc but like there, it is simply not acceptable to continue with business as usual just because the answers are difficult to come by.
Maybe those GWs need to be kept in a purpose built (circular?) tank like those for other pelagic Fishes like
Mahi-Mahi, this possibly in isolation in order to avoid harmful interactions. Maybe there are other better and cheaper solutions.
But maybe, it simply cannot be properly done -
and then, it shouldn't.But as always, that would be just me.
Still: co-bloggers, habitual ranters and shit stirrers - I must say, I'm frankly underwhelmed!
I thought that as a collective, we were less timid and politically correct than that? Is this a case of collective californication - or am I just barking up the completely wrong tree here?
Comments welcome!
PS
mirabile dictu, I would have to agree with
Sean!
Shark fins in Taiwan - pic by Shawn Heinrichs. Click for detail
