A Ship(wreck)’s Log III: A Zebra Shark Tale

We recently received a large shipment of animals from a supplier in Cairns, Australia.  This shipment included many of the fish species that will be on display in our new Shipwrecks Alive! exhibit, including a Tassled Wobbegong, a Black-Blotched Porcupine Pufferfish, an Orange Spotted Grouper, some Spotted Unicornfish and many more.  

Black-blotched porcupine pufferfish

Orange spotted grouper

The star of this shipment, however, is a gorgeous female Zebra Shark!  She is approximately 5 feet long and weighs about 30 lbs, and she’s still not done growing.  She is what’s considered a sub-adult and will eventually reach a length of 10 feet!

Zebra shark

So you might be wondering, how does a 5 foot long shark get all the way from Australia to Duluth?  Well, let’s start at the beginning.  Late in the evening of February 4, 2012, a Zebra Shark was born at Reef HQ, a public aquarium in Queensland Australia.  Our little “pup” (that’s what a baby shark is called) was hatched from an egg after an approximately 4-6 month gestation period.  Zebra sharks are oviparous. This means the pups develop outside of the body. The eggs are protected by egg cases with hairy-looking fibers all over the outside which help to attach the egg case to corals or seagrass and keep it from floating away. They can be about 8 inches long and Zebra Sharks will lay about four eggs at a time.  The pups actually have stripes when they’re born (hence the name Zebra Shark).  As they grow older, the stripes fade and they develop a spotted pattern.

Our zebra shark is showing a spotted pattern

Now getting back to our shark - she spent the first year of her life growing up at Reef HQ and was then sent to Cairns Marine, a fish wholesaler in Cairns Australia.  She lived at their holding facility for another year, eating and growing like crazy, until we called up Cairns looking for, you guessed it, a Zebra Shark!  After working out all of the details, Cairns packed her up, along with the rest of our fish and sent her on her long journey to us.

She was packed in a large shipping container filled with water, lots of oxygen, and a pump to circulate the water and air in her container.  Then she was put on a plane as cargo (yes, fish are commonly in the cargo holds of commercial planes – think about that the next time you fly!).  The plane went from Cairns to Hong Kong, then to Los Angeles.

Large shipping container from Cairns, Australia

Individual, smaller shipping containers

The large orange-spotted grouper traveled in its own container

  Because the travel time was so long, a water change needed to be performed so that water quality was within safe limits for the shark.  So we enlisted Consistent Sea, another fish wholesaler in Los Angeles, to assist us.  They got our shark through U.S. Customs (just like any other international traveler) and brought her back to their warehouse for a water change and fresh oxygen.  Finally, they repacked her and sent her on another plan from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, and our staff collected her and the rest of the animals at the airport and headed back to Duluth.

Once we got the animals back to the aquarium (at around midnight!), the real work began. Whenever a fish is moved from one water body to another, acclimation must be done.  This basically means that we exchange water from the new tank to the tank or shipping container that the fish is in until both are as similar as possible.  During acclimation, we closely monitor things like temperature, pH, oxygen levels and salinity to make sure our fish stay healthy and to determine when they’re ready to go into their new tank.

Tomato Hind being transferred to acclimation tub

Operations manager Jay Walker netting grouper from shipping container

  When our Zebra Shark was ready, we carefully moved her from her shipping container into her quarantine tank with a cloth stretcher designed to move large animals like sturgeon and sharks.

Zebra shark acclimating

The Zebra Shark will live in her quarantine tank in our Holding area and will go through our standard quarantine treatments to prevent bacterial and parasite infections.  Another of our quarantine protocols for our sharks is to get them to eat directly from us using tongs.  Luckily, since this particular shark was born and has lived in captivity her whole life, she has already been trained to come to people for food – which makes our job much easier!  She, along with the rest of our new arrivals, will remain in Holding until our new exhibit, Shipwrecks Alive, is completed.  Be sure to visit her and her tank mates when the exhibit opens in July!

Anang's Retiring!

If you've read any of our previous blogs on Anang, or Haley as I like to call her, you know she has recently been in her holding space recovering (beautifully!) from a fracture in her fibula. She has been doing great. She is as active as she can be, and always up for new enrichment.

 (Haley, or Anang, playing with paper towel rolls in her holding space.)

Did you know that otters in the wild usually live to be about 10 years old? Haley is 17! In captivity otters can live to be up to 25, but usually 18 years is more common. The oldest North American River Otter in captivity just passed away recently and was 21 years old. Otters can live so much longer in captivity due to their daily care, veterinarian checks, dental cleanings, and well rounded diet. 

Old otters can suffer from many of the same ailments as people can! Haley has arthritis in her back hips, and has for many years. She seems to be thriving in her holding area, which is really flat, with an in-ground pool that has easy access. 

Since she seems to be doing well, her animal care staff has decided she will be retired from her exhibit, so we can give her a comfortable, flatter space to live in. She will remain at the Great Lakes Aquarium for the rest of her life. We are hopeful that she will live in our downstairs holding area for a few more years. 

Many of you are probably wondering if she will ever get any otter friends or be introduced into another roommate. And the answer to that is no. She has seemed to really enjoy her time here alone, after Zhoosh (Clyde) passed last summer. She was so active and played so much, we had to continually up her diet to keep up with her metabolism! And, in the wild, females generally wouldn't make new friends at her age (or an age comparable to hers in the wild, maybe 8-10). Females would stay with their families or else just go on by themselves. North American River Otters are not the most social of all of the otter species. Most males will live on their own for most of their lives, and females will stay with their family until breaking off to go on their own. So Haley's instincts are to be alone, and she seems to be happy being alone.

 (Being her super cute self!)

Fortunately, her holding area will be visible to all of the behind the scenes tours. She will be moving to the space before the summer months, but the actual date is still unknown. 

The space will accommodate her aging body in many ways. It is really quite flat, with ramps to get to any elevated areas, instead of steps, and has a nice size pool for exercise. Because of her arthritis, it is best to give her some space for exercise, but not too much to make her joints more sore. 

We are excited for her to move to this space, and we hope that you will come visit her on our behind the scenes tours! 

 

(Enjoying her mackerel, which she had to pull out of the red ball to the right! It took her almost ten minutes!) 

Here an otter, there an otter!

The staff at the Great Lakes Aquarium is excited to tell you that we have two new resident North American River Otters! 

 

These two otters have come to us from DuPont, Louisiana. Together, they were trapped in a crawfish farm by a local trapper. They had been eating the crawfish at the farm, and had become nuisance animals. North American River Otters are not endangered or threatened, so in this case, these two otters would have been lethally trapped. Another man paid the trapper to live trap them and then he brought them to his space, where he holds otters until they can be placed in a zoo or aquarium setting. Demand for North American River Otters is high, so he holds them usually only for a few weeks. 

 (This is shortly after we got them. You can see their transport crate with the MSP label on it!)

We found this man through an otter specialist, and he came highly recommended. Other well known zoos and aquariums have also gotten otters from him. 

(We had put out a request on the official list for placement of any otters that needed a new home, and we had also contacted many, many wildlife rehabilitation centers and individuals. Last year, we heard of only two otters (in the US) that were rehabbed and placed in captivity; all the rest were released! That is great, and the point of a rehabber.)

Within only two weeks of contacting the source, Heidi (the curator) and I were headed down to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to pick them up. They were each in their own wooden crate, with holes along the top for air flow, but very little visibility. That can be scary for an animal that has no idea of what is going on. A gentleman with a forklift put them in our van, and we got on our way. 

Upon arriving to the Great Lakes Aquarium, we unloaded them onto a cart and wheeled them inside our holding area. We weighed each crate with the hopes of getting a weight for each otter once we could weigh their crates, eventually.  We placed a few piles of fish outside their crates and then pulled the doors off. We left the room and watched from behind the window. They came out within a few short minutes and ate right away. Then, the took a few drinks of water and explored their surroundings. 

Heidi worked with them alone for about a week so they would get used to her coming in with food and not being too scary. She fed them 2-3 times per day. Then, once they were ready to eat right through the bars of their area, I started helping to feed, too (it is much easier to each feed one otter!). 

 (Curator Heidi is feeding one through the bars of the holding space.)

It is really important with any new animals, including our pets, to earn their trust. We wanted them to know that they are safe here and we won't hurt them. We let them dictate the speed at which we work. It took until day 8 for me to start feeding with Heidi because the day before they showed her that they were starting to trust her by eating from her hand or coming right up to her on the other side of the bars. They also have each chosen their "station" of where they want to eat, and they will go there every time we go in with food dishes. This is telling us that they know how to learn and how to target. We will target train them so we can build on that basic training. (Target training for an otter means we hold a target and when we ask them to target, they put their nose onto the target.) If they respond to target training, they can be targeted to a scale, into a crate, or to move elsewhere. When they are ready to go inside a crate and have the door shut, we can move them upstairs, to the holding area off the exhibit. They  will dictate the speed at which everything is done. 

So, you are probably wondering what they are like, how they look, and all sorts of things about them! Firstly, we are told (by the man who kept them until we took them), that he thinks they are both females. At this point, because it isn't breeding season, if one is a male, we won't know yet. Also, their thick fur and skin folds prevent us from determining their sex clearly. So, at first I was calling one "the brave one" or "Clyde junior". She looks a lot like a mini Clyde! The other one is more shy and took a few days longer to warm up to us. I call her "the shy one". But now, it is almost hard to tell which one is brave and which one is shy! But, one (the "shy" one) is a bit darker, just a tiny bit, and has ears that stick out a bit more. She also has beautiful white, sharp, large teeth! The other one has smaller teeth. (We are hoping to use their teeth to help determine their ages.) They love to eat! They are still getting used to toys and blankets, but they like to carry straw around, make beds, and a huge mess! They are already really comfortable in their space! 

 (This is the one that was more shy at first. She is getting a shrimp off of the plastic duck toy.)

 (This is the one that has always been a bit more brave. She is eating a shrimp.)

We hope to have some sort of public naming contest or public participation in their naming. Most likely, we will start after the public gets to see them on exhibit. To keep up with the latest information on how they will get their names, please check our Facebook page, our website, or future blog posts!

And, as the time draws near to when they will make their first appearance on the exhibit, we will make sure to get the word out as much as we can so everyone can come see them! 

We hope you are as excited as we are to welcome them to our facility!