toccata I am not sure, we have three curators, two men and one woman, none by the name of Scott. It was a very bad decission by the old curator to even bring in the GWS we had back in '84. We are/were definately more prepared for it this time around. The GWS that we had the first time around was in out Monterey Bay Habitats tank, about 335,000 gallons. It is actaully made a figure eight shape. I am not sure abot it closing down, I will dig around a little and find out what I can and let you know. Right now we are on a day to day basis with her. If her health goes south for any reason what so ever and we can not do anything for her, we go to So Cal, no questions asked. The health of this animal is of the untmost importance not only to her, but to us as well as she is helping us learn from her.
sjfishguy We can not control what other aquariums do. If they ask how it was done, we will be honest with them. We feel as a conservation group that if there is another organization out there that can crack a code that we can not, so be it. This is not a race of who ever does it first does it right, it is a race against a great animal being wiped out, mostly because of a movie. In ten years would we like to be the ones to say "we are the main reason the GWS is in better shape now that it was then"? SUre we would, but our is the best that we know, and we are modifying it pretty much every day. About the tapering, I ment to say in our exhibit. The other sharks in there taper to the fluke, so when she swims over head, you can see the shadow and it looks like no other shark in the exhibit. Thanks for the clarification.
blaze4300 Which holding tank as you refering to? If you are taking about the four millin gallon pen, that was right in the ocean. Water, small fish, plankton, etc, could flow right through it. If you are refering to the transport that brought her up from So Cal, she was only in there for about 8.5 hours. We sucks water out of the ocean, in she went and off we went. The "tunabego" has its own filter on it, and all parameters are sent into the cab of the truck wile it is moving. We actaully almost didnt make the trip because about 20 minutes before we were to leave, the camera crapped out on us. We had to make scheduled stops ever 30 minutes to make sure that she was doing ok. If she started looking bad, we would have turned around. If you are refering to the tank that she is in, it gets about 56 gallons a minute. We heat up the water coming from the bay (from 55-60 to about 68), and the excess flows back into the bay. We have a Great Tide Pool, that is always full of water, and no one knows why...our overflow.
Aquaguru We are encouraged ever day that we are allowed to have her. One really great pice of news is that on Friday (I think, maybe it was Thursday) she accepted makerel supplemented with vitamins. So we are already starting to mix up the diet a little bit. She doesnt seem to care.