AR-News: (US - CA) Museum Wants to Capture Great White Shark

[Phyllis Bedford]

>From today's AJC -
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/science/0703/09greatwhite.html

Aquarium wants to capture great white shark 
Calif. facility wants to be first to keep one alive in captivity 

San Francisco Chronicle 

OXNARD, Calif. -- Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium have embarked
on an effort to become the first in the world to capture a great white
shark and keep it alive in captivity.

But they also acknowledge that doing so may prove almost as difficult as
making people love the giant predator.

The respected aquarium is in the second year of what could be a four-or
five-year effort to study the fearsome sharks, one of the world's largest
predators, around the Channel Islands. In time, they hope to capture a
juvenile -- a so-called pup, from 5 to 7 feet long and less than a year
old -- that can acclimate to life behind glass.

Great white sharks grow to astonishing sizes, as long as 20 feet and up to
5,000 pounds with appetites to match, but these ferocious hunters have
proved surprisingly fragile in captivity, surviving no more than a few
weeks, and their life habits are still largely a mystery.

Over four or five weeks this summer, the aquarium's scientists are
capturing young sharks and attaching electronic tags to learn about their
eating and migration habits. Using that information, the scientists hope
they will be able to nurture a young shark in a huge underwater viewing
pen in Monterey.

At a dockside press conference here Tuesday, aquarium officials also
acknowledged that they hope to transform any scientific success into a
marketing bonanza.

"Ultimately, it'll be like pandas at a zoo, that kind of novelty and
attractiveness," said John O'Sullivan, the aquarium's curator of field
operations. "We think people will love it. But there's also a strong
research component."

Added Christina Slager, an aquarium curator, "We're looking for an
ambassador for the aquarium. They're perfect."

She and the other scientists conceded they had some work to do
rehabilitating the lethal reputation of the great white (Carcharodon
carcharias), so glossily embellished in "Jaws." The sharks, they argued,
have little interest in humans, preferring such fare as sea lions or small
whales.

Slager admitted that great whites had been known to bite people, then
quickly added, "Yeah, but so have dogs."

The project has become one of the largest undertakings ever for the
aquarium, with an expected cost of $1.2 million.

Public aquariums have tried for decades to put great white sharks on
exhibit, but the longest one has survived is three weeks. Most of those
sharks were captured by fishers. Scientists attribute the failures to
stress to the shark during capture, an inability to feed in captivity and
poor exhibit tank design.

The Monterey aquarium's spending is being justified not just to produce a
possible mascot but also to answer some basic questions about an animal
widely mythologized but little understood.

The scientists say that while California is well known for sightings of
great white sharks -- mostly in the waters around the Farallon Islands and
Ano Nuevo, both home to large populations of elephant seals -- it is
little more than a hypothesis that they bear their young in the waters
near the Channel Islands.

Beyond that, they said, little is known about their migration habits, how
often they feed, whether they form schools or even their preferred water
temperatures. Slager said she guessed that there were perhaps 100 or so
adults in California waters, and that the numbers appeared to be dwindling
around the world.

But Tim Athens, the gregarious captain of the commercial fishing vessel
that the aquarium has chartered for its 32-day search, quickly made clear
how little agreement there is, even among people who have spent a great
deal of time looking for and dealing with the sharks.

Chatting aboard his boat, he insisted that the numbers of great whites
being spotted in the Channel Islands region had been going up and that, by
all measures, the population appeared to be growing.

"There is absolutely no question the population is increasing," said
Athens, who wore a gold fishhook pendant around his neck and said he had
at home the monstrous jaws of a 1,000-pounder he caught a number of years
ago. "You can trust them or trust someone who spends 200 days a year on
the water," he said dryly of the shark count.

What all agreed on is that great white sharks are extremely charismatic
creatures, with a majestic, powerful appearance.

Although they do not appear to seek out humans, great whites can be
spontaneous and brutal in their occasional attacks. Athens said he knew of
an urchin diver killed near here several years ago from a great white
attack, and in Australia a 33-year-old woman was reportedly attacked and
eaten in 1985.

Great whites are far more lethal than some other shark species, in part,
the scientists said, because they have an unusually fine sense of smell
and an ability to detect even tiny electrical currents. In the ocean,
minute jolts of electricity are given off when a fish bleeds; this sense
can send a great white toward a wounded creature instantly.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has achieved successes in the past with keeping
rare creatures alive in captivity, such as unusual jellyfish and mahi
mahi. But Randall Kochevar, the aquarium's science communications manager,
said that a jellyfish just did not have quite the same pull with the
public as a great white.

"There isn't a better messenger for fish conservation," he said.