4' Great White on Exhibit

In the Outer Bay exhibit at Monterey Bay Aquarium. Eating and doing well in captivity!

http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/whiteshark.asp

The 4-foot, 4-inch-long female shark, which weighs between 50 and 60 pounds, was caught in a commercial halibut gillnet off Huntington Beach on August 20. There are no other white sharks on display in the world today, and no aquarium has ever exhibited a white shark for more than 16 days.

Cheers

James

Very cool. thanks for alerting us--

L

Yes, let's keep an eye on her. I wish I could get over there to view her - I haven't been there in years. And the Outer Bay tank is truly stunning.

Cheers

James

I unwittingly drove by this gal on Monday. Took a drive up the coast, off one of our beach dive sites there had been an offshore pen about 1/2 mile out for a couple weeks, and we had wondered what it was...That's where they were keeping her. Drove her up to Monterey ("in an unmarked truck") on Tuesday

Wish I would have known... would have been a long surface swim, but worth the sight :-)

Chris

I wonder if she was born at Isla Guadalupe? Or maybe the channel islands? Who knows where great whites are born - I sure hope we find out.

Cheers

James

tks for the update. Incidently, i will be heading in that direction next week. Lucky me

Eric

James - I just talked to our shark guy, Jeff Seigel. He said that Santa Monica Bay appears to be the birthing area for the northern population of white sharks. The mothers come here, pup, & go back north leaving the young ones behind. The babies stay for a year or more before heading north. Every year we get notified about or receive several small ones caught by net fishermen in the bay. Whether the southern ones do the same is unknown (at least he hasn't heard anything about it).

Something I didn't know is that great whites have been protected in California since 1994. It's illegal to fish or kill them. They can only be taken with a scientific permit for research. Commercial fishermen either release them or notify Fish & Game personnel who contact researchers. There a CDFG information sheet at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/whiteshark.html - it talks about how to avoid being attached as well as natural history.

Leslie

Yup, and for the past couple years we've had some hysteria when people see these young great whites near beaches - Pacific Palisades and San Onofre come to mind as recent beaches closed because there are [gasp!] sharks in the water. Imagine that. Of course, the info that they are juveniles and close in to eat fish is buried on page A8 of the story.......

Re: protection, last year or the year before some guy caught one off Manhattan Beach pier, posed in all sorts of proud warrior pics with it, then the DFG found out and busted him...

Chris