Georgia Aquarium loses second whale shark

Sharks, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

The Georgia Aquarium has lost another whale shark:

ATLANTA, June 13 — For the second time in five months, the Georgia Aquarium is mourning one of its stars, a young whale shark named Norton who was euthanized by veterinarians early Wednesday morning after he stopped swimming and slipped to the bottom of his tank.

The exact cause of his illness is not yet known, said Ray Davis, the senior vice president for zoological operations.

The shark had been swimming and eating poorly for months, a change in his health that seemed to coincide with the use of a chemical pesticide to treat his tank for an infestation of parasitic leeches, Mr. Davis said.

Another young whale shark named Ralph, who was also exposed to the treatments, died in January after he stopped swimming and could not be revived.

HT: Reader Thomas.

Comments

[B-Money]

I am not an animal rights activist, but there is a reason why these large creatures die off in captivity. They do not belong there! These large animals need the freedom of the open sea to live full lives.

But if we leave them in the wild they are exposed to poachers and over fishing. Such beautiful creatures, such a shame.

[steve duncan]

Bush read of these travails. He then instructed HHS to look into adding the same pesticide to lunches in inner city schools. Figures the game was exposed on vote suppression might as well get them before achieving the franchise.

[B-Money]

Wow, a post about whale sharks and somebody drops a Bush comment. Apparently there are no limits.

[LauraJMixon]

That's very sad.

[LauraJMixon]

B-Money, this is not a particularly good blog to hang out at, if snarky remarks about Bush bother you.

[B-Money]

You must be new Laura. I have no love for Bush and no problem with snarky Bush comments. I have been here for a while, so I know it is a liberal site. Thanks for stating th obvious though.

I am just past dropping a Bush bash ever chance I can. It is a little sad that people have to post a Bush comment in a story about a dead whale. That is disrespectful to the dead whale.

[voxpop]

It IS very sad about the whales and the pictures are awesome ! Saddest is what the heck are these idiots doing continuing to use the pesticides??? damn. (it seems like a duh to me that one would NOT use them again)

BMoney, although theoretically I agree with you I believe Steve Duncan's comment has merit considering what I and others are experiencing. I wouldn't be surprised by anything at all those people are up to.
I've been intimidated (and yes poisoned) by so many Republicans that (as a white girl of some small prominence) I would not even be surprised about them trying to put toxins in inner-city childrens' food or any other defenseless person.
I'm more than shocked about them spraying antibiotics on lunchmeats (who knows what it really is?) and by the new practice of preserving fish/game/meat literally into eternity by treating it with formaldehyde or some such so it looks pinker on the grocer's shelf.
And, apologies to Mr. Whale. Sorry to hijack your thread momentarily to insert a comment on things important and possibly related.
When you lose a great creature it's a not so subtle effect on everyone. Any loss involves all of us. (sorry hope i don't sound stupid or preachy. LOL)
In Floriduh we do love our sea life. Most of us, anyway !

[voxpop]

Oh and BMoney, you are right. They belong to the sea. It's ridiculous.

[LauraJMixon]

I'm not new to the site. I share your sadness about the whale.

[Pennant]

A whale shark is a shark, not a whale. Not only is not a mammal, it is the largest living fish species

[B-money]

Some people are so picky!

[LauraJMixon]

I stand corrected. :)

[janet]

An easy way to tell a fish from a whale is to look at the tail. Fish tails are vertical (move side to side), whale flukes horizontal (move up and down). A small piece of whale lore from my childhood whale obsession.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a better approach with its white sharks, I think: they keep them for a few months, then let them go and track them for research: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/whiteshark/

[cfrost]

Speaking as someone who has kept fish (including threatened species) in a laboratory setting, I’m saddened by the two shark’s demise, but not so much as to get that upset about it. I’m also not particularly surprised. All animals die. Any animal in your care may die. Not to belabor the obvious, but whale sharks are not like dogs or goldfish, which have thrived as human commensals precisely because they can tolerate lots, and often severe, abuse and neglect. The aquarium took a gamble as one does any time one tries to husband an organism that has very peculiar requirements. Sometimes you can pull it off and sometimes you can’t.

Speaking also as someone who has had listed, endangered fish die in their care (I had assumed –stupidly- that electricity would not fail and that a critical check-valve could wait over the weekend and be purchased Monday morning. Unfortunately someone flipped the wrong breaker Sunday night.) I know the people entrusted with these animals are literally sick over this. We were doing research that would presumably help a particular species of sturgeon. The people at the Georgia aquarium were doing something that is as important, or more so overall, for the benefit, not just of a particular shark, but also for aquatic life in general.

What’s important here, and must be remembered, is that six billion people with the help of at least as many internal combustion engines, are rapidly wearing most of the world’s ecosystems threadbare. Aquatic organisms are particularly well suited to be the canary in the ecological coalmine. Why? Think about what happens every time you flush the toilet, or whenever you’re car’s engine leaks a drop of oil, or whenever you eat food that was grown on land that was once covered with native vegetation. Pollution, silt, and unnaturally warm water flow downhill. (Worse yet, exotic pest species can move uphill.) The biota that live downstream cannot hop over to the next stream or reef, it lives or dies where it is, and it’s dying fast. Most of the animals listed as threatened or endangered in the U.S. are aquatic creatures: freshwater fish and shellfish mainly. This is going on mostly unseen and unnoticed by practically everyone whose lives are not intimately connected to aquatic life: a lake, river or ocean shore looks pretty much the same whatever is going on under the surface. (Look closely though and you’ll see new aquatic weeds choking waterways, water once clear but now green, fishing boats no longer part of the scene . . .)

A public aquarium is an educational endeavor, and IMHO educating the general public about aquatic life and the mounting anthropogenic crises confronting aquatic life, is very important. People however, are not going to shell out good money to see a bunch of fish in tanks unless there is something of a draw. Whale sharks are about as big a draw as you can get. Perhaps whale sharks may prove impossible to keep in captivity, many animals are. There’s no way to know for sure until it’s tried. One could argue that it shouldn’t have been tried, that the project was too audacious. The Georgia aquarium took a gamble and the outcome is as yet uncertain, I wish them luck. I also wish whale sharks everywhere luck: any animal that travels around with several tons of palatable meat on its back in a world with six billion hungry people has the deck stacked pretty well against it.

[Aaron]

It's a travesty to cage such majestic creatures in (relatively) small tanks. I've been to the Georgia aquarium, and it's great, but Whale Sharks, like cetaceans (whales, porpoises and dolphins) were designed to live their lives in the wide expanses of the open ocean. They suffer when they are contained, even small bays, let alone a man-made aquariums.

I understand the good that having such animals in captivity does in helping to raise awareness and support for ocean conservation, management of fisheries etc. but certain species should be exempt from being placed on display in these circus like environments, especially when we don't know enough about them to keep them from dying so prematurely.

Where I grew up in South Florida, there was once a place called Ocean World. It was a relatively small aquatic Park with a number of aquariums, sharks, dolphins and seals. I often went there when I was a kid. In the early 1990s, protesters helped shut down the facility after it was learned that the Dolphins were not being cared for properly. After the facility was closed, and subsequently demolished, the remains of literally hundreds of dolphins who had been quietly buried on the grounds over the decades, were unearthed. No one knew that the average life expectancy was one to three years for these highly intelligent mammals under such confine conditions. The people that own the park never let anyone know that they were constantly replacing these "performers" as their predecessors died of sorrow and neglect.

Live free or die, that has always been my motto. Perhaps they feel the same way. So the next time you go to one of these aquariums and look into the eyes of one of these beautiful creatures, keep that thought in mind.

Save the oceanic whitetip shark Carcharhinus longimanus

[cfrost]

No doubt, there have been, and are, abuses of animals in zoos and aquaria. The public today however has become so sensitive to the issue that any institution of any size that wants to exhibit animals has to operate under very close scrutiny. They know that, and for that reason they’ve formed organizations such as the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Association of Zoo and Veterinary Technicians, World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, etc. Notice by the names that they’re not dealing with experimental animals, which is a whole different can of worms public zoos and aquaria would rather avoid. Besides the incentive of being able to tell visitors that the zoo or aquarium they are seeing is an accredited member of the AZA, there is the practical matter of needing the cooperation of other institutions who are accredited and entities such as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service that will ask for accreditation. Animals and expertise are swapped and loaned around between members. You can’t just go out in the wild and get a snow leopard or okapi anymore; they come from other zoos. And among accredited institutions, big and/or important animals come with provenance documentation just like major works of art. Terrestrial vertebrates on the IUCN red list, and included in international and regional studbooks, probably won’t be obtained unless they are figured into breeding objectives. The Georgia Aquarium is currently applying for AZA accreditation. I have no idea if the whale shark deaths will hurt the process.

As for the sharks belonging in the wild, ideally, yes. But I’d rather see one in an aquarium than on a dinner plate. I’m more worried about populations than individual animals. Mammals and birds need some degree of mental stimulation, which is a major challenge in captive animals. With fish and sharks though, if they’re fed and they’re healthy, we can probably assume that their default condition is happy. The two dead sharks weren’t feeding and they obviously weren’t happy. Even with necropsy results we may never know what happened. Aquaria in general and the Georgia Aquarium in particular will be now weighing pros and cons of exhibiting whale sharks very carefully, sadly, for people fishing for whale sharks, fishing is mostly pros.

[cfrost]

Re: oceanic white tipped sharks.

I’ve spent almost five years at sea on fishing vessels in warm and cold waters. Of all the biting, stinging animals I’ve seen, including several species of large sharks, stingrays, torpedo rays, big billfish, sea wasps, and killer whales; white tipped sharks were the only ones that were truly scary. If you fall overboard in the tropical high seas, those are the guys that are coming to eat you. Many times I saw tuna or porpoise that had been corralled in purse seines with white tips come aboard with cantaloupe sized scoops of flesh missing. Most white tips I saw in the Eastern Tropical Pacific were less than eight feet long, many no more than three feet. They’re also sluggish compared to other pelagic sharks. What gives one the willies though when contemplating them while aboard a rusty fishing boat is the fact that they’re seemingly always around and always hungry.

Nights we’d often drift, and after dinner the cook would throw the kitchen trash overboard. (These guys are not exactly eco-conscious.) Within an hour or so you’d generally see a round, white-tipped fin illuminated by the ship’s lights sliding around the black water amongst the floating trash. Like garbage-prowling raccoons, but lethal. If you remember the description in Moby Dick of frenzied sharks devouring whales inches away from the flensers' feet, that would be white tipped sharks.

Tuna seiners don’t target sharks, but they are caught in small numbers with the by-catch. Any that come aboard have their fins cut off and the carcasses are thrown overboard. The fins are dried and sold. When the boats drift at night a few baited lines are set out to catch sharks. Those caught are mostly white tipped sharks. The technique is very simple: bait a hook attached to a wire leader and sinker with a baseball-sized hunk of fish on heavy nylon net line, tie the end of the line off to something sturdy on deck, and put a slip knot on the line to indicate if the line has been pulled. During the night the guys on deck or engine watch check the knots and haul in any lines missing slip knots.

When I was aboard tuna boats over twenty years ago white tips were common enough, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their numbers had dropped what with steady fishing pressure. They bear live young as opposed to spewing millions of eggs and they’re top carnivores, both often hallmarks of what population biologists refer to as “K-selected” species, i.e. they don’t replace themselves rapidly.

[cfrost]

I should add that I have the jaw of a white tipped shark in the room where I'm typing this. It was the first and only shark jaw I'll ever clean. Put your hand in a blender full of razor blades to get an idea why.

[Natalie]

poor whale. i see why people say its the chemicals fault and captivity but its nice to see these marvelous creatures so close. but yes. it would be better if we left these whales sharks alone. they are too big for captivity. thats my opinion.

[Melissa]

it is really wrong to put a Whale Shark, the biggest fish in the world, into one small tank after it has been in the open ocean for so long. Thats why it stopped eating, he probably didnt want to live, he probably thought it would be better to be dead then be in a tiny little tank. That would be like taking a person out of the world and keeping them in a small cage or something. Its just wrong!!!