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.
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| Black-blotched porcupine pufferfish |
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| 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!
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| Zebra shark |
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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.
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| 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.
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| Large shipping container from Cairns, Australia |
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| Individual, smaller shipping containers |
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| 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.
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| Tomato Hind being transferred to acclimation tub |
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| 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.
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| 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!
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