invincible569 Long term goals, I dont know if we have really set any. But obviousaly we want to keep her as long as possible. Having the only GWS in the world puts little bit of pressure on the aquarists, not only by the public, who for the most part are supportive; but also by environmentalists that dont want to see us have the animal as well. I am sure they are ready to jump down our throats if somthing does go wrong. She will remain in the same exhibit as long as we have her, for a couple of reasons: First being that we dont have another exhibit that is large enough. This is the biggest exhibit we have as far as gallons and swimming room go. Second reason is we dont want to have to put any unwarrented stress on her by moving her unless absloutely necessary. Her environment will not change at all. I know the aquarists were looking to get a Dolphinfish (Durado, Mahi Mahi - all the same animal), but that was before the addition of the GWS. Other than that the exhibit will stay the same.
Fedding has actaully already been altered in there with the addition of the GWS. We used to feed the tunas four times a week (Tues, Thurs, Sat and Sun) about 160 lbs of squid. Now in addition to that feeding, we do light feeding the other three days, about 90 lbs or so of squid. As far as feeding her goes, we are still offering her twice a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. On a side note: we fed her on Sunday along the back wall (so the public can not see in fear of flash photography being taken) a piece of salmon and she bit down on the food and swam with half hanging out of her mouth right up to the window and started munching her food. Eyelids rolled back, teeth came out, people all yelled. It was awesome. She bit the salmon steak in half and one of the tunas came along and ate the other half that she didnt get into her mouth.
The temperature of the water is about 68 degrees. It is bay water heated up as the water out out our back door is 60 degrees on a really warm day. The exhibit is more of what we get during an El Nino, so most of the animals in the exhibit can be found in Southern California regularly. She has not bitten any of the other animals in the tank yet. All are too big right now for her to tackle in one chomp. Could she take a bite out of anything in that exhibit? You bet your prized coral she can. We are hoping to keep her well fed to where she will not be eating our exhibit, but we are interested to see how that all plays out as well. Are salmon steaks better than live tuna (and everything else in there) to a GWS, we shall see.
There is work to be done, yes. But at the same time we dont want to take the life of an animal that can be reproducing an already decreasing population, especially since it is a female. And at some point she will out grow that exhibit. When will that be? Good question. I belive that is question number 568 of 1,467 what we have.
Once agan, sorry for the long post everyone, but I believe in answering good questions with good answers.
