From hammerheads, to orcas, and even bull sharks, aquariums around the world attract millions of visitors every day to marvel at the world’s most dangerous marine creatures. But there’s one ocean danger that can’t be found in captivity: the great white shark!
You’d think us humans would pay big sums to see those famously dangerous predators up close. And yet, not a single great white currently exists in captivity. However, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, in the last 70 years over 30 great whites have been seen in aquariums around the world. The question is, where are they now? Let's uncover what happened to the great whites we put in aquariums.
You don’t need me to state that sharks are scary! According to a poll from Ipsos Public affairs, over 48% of Americans admit to being scared of sharks more than wolves, bears or even Spiders! And when it comes to the scariest of all the sharks, most would agree it’s the great white.
For starters, those burly beasts are the largest predatory fish in the ocean, capable of reaching an intimidating 20 feet long! That’s longer than an average Humvee! But all that bulk doesn’t slow those guys down; far from it! In the water, they can also reach a top speed of 35 mph!In comparison, humans have an average swimming speed of just 2 mph! Basically, you’ve got no hope of swimming away from one of those guys in the water. And that’s something you’d really want to do, considering great whites are armed with around 50 3-inch long, sharp, serrated teeth!
But that’s still not the scariest part. Great whites are also blessed with one of the animal kingdom’s most powerful bites, able to snap their jaws shut with a force of 4,000 PSI! For reference, that’s over 25 times as powerful as a human bite! And great whites have been known to bite humans some have escaped, but many haven’t.Of all unprovoked shark attacks since 1580,
Great Whites are responsible for 37% of them! Basically, if you value your life, it’s a good idea to stay as far away from those critters as possible! But as dangerous and terrifying as we know them to be, humans want to get up close with those panic-inducing predators. As a result, for the last 70 years, aquariums around the world have tried to capture and display great whites for the masses!It all started off back in the 1950s, when Los Angeles’ Marineland of the Pacific, opened its gates for the first time. That was a pretty big deal, considering the 90-acre site was the largest oceanarium in the world at the time. And being such a big deal, Marineland of the Pacific needed to fill their aquariums with some extraordinary exhibits. And what would be better than a great white shark, something no other aquarium had!Fortunately, 4 juvenile great whites had been making passes at swimmers around Scripps pier. 3 were killed, but one which was somewhere between 5 ft 7 and 6 ft according to papers at the time, was baited and taken alive. It was lifted into a tarpaulin, and then dumped into an outdoor tank at the aquarium, becoming the first recorded great white in captivity.
Sadly, it wouldn’t last long there. After less than one day the shark passed away. So, that captivity experiment didn’t get off to the smoothest start! Despite that, other aquariums weren’t put off by the challenge. 6 years later, Waikiki Aquarium in Honolulu, captured a great white that was much larger, measuring in at an impressive 13 feet.
That particular great white was caught off Honolulu Harbor, before being displayed at the aquarium, where it survived for a grand total of 24 hours. So that’s 2 sharks, both dead in less than a day. By 1968, there’d been four attempts to keep great whites' captive. Yet on every occasion, things ended predictably bleakly, with not one shark making it past two days in an aquarium before going belly up.
Despite all those issues, in 1968, Australia’s Manly Marineland Aquarium decided to take a great white in, when a fisherman inadvertently caught a 7-footer in his nets off the coast of Sydney. Unfortunately for the shark, it’d be a rough ride getting there.It was tethered to the fisherman’s boat for an hour, before a truck dispatched from the aquarium arrived. After being lugged onto the pickup truck, it was thrown into an unfiltered, cramped water tank and jostled around in the back on the 45-minute journey.When they finally reached the aquarium, the shark was hauled by stretcher up several flights of stairs, before being dumped into an open water tank. Despite all odds, it had survived the journey! Unfortunately for that great white, the Manly Marineland tank was another obstacle it had to overcome.For starters, it was crammed with turtles, nurse sharks and various fish. The tank itself was 20-feet tall, 18-feet from front to back, and held over 250,000 gallons of water. While you’d be able to store the water capacity of 12,500 standard-sized fish tanks there, the aquarium was still too small for a great white, even a young one.
You may think this is over-dramatic, but great whites travel great distances. In 2005, one was observed to have travelled from Africa to Australia and back, covering 12,400 miles in just 9 months. That tank isn’t sounding so huge now, is it?Clocking up so many miles allow those creatures to hunt plenty of prey, but it’s also important to their survival for another reason. Great whites are obligate ram ventilators. That means, in order to breathe they must swim with their mouths open to force water over their gills, enabling them to extract oxygen from the water.
So, the more they swim in well oxygenated waters, the more easily they’re able to breathe. But a great white that’s trapped in a relatively small tank won’t be able to move as much, and as a result, will struggle to breathe. Regardless of those problems, the Manly Marineland shark survived. And it didn’t just survive, but it swam around the aquarium without any issues.Even more incredibly, after about 3 days the shark even started feeding on live fish in the aquarium, something no previous great white shark in captivity had done. Initially, workers at Manly Marineland celebrated the shark’s eating habits, but their celebrations soon turned sour.Divers that entered the tank reported the captured shark started developing an interest in them. That shark was more interested in the taste of the diver’s flesh! Despite surviving in captivity for a record-breaking 10 days, Manly Marineland made the decision to remove the Great White from the aquarium.
There was just one teeny-tiny problem, getting that beast out of the tank! As no-one was willing to try and catch the now-dangerous shark, it was decided it would have to be, exterminated. If that wasn’t brutal enough, the aquarium even sold tickets to the event!Tragically, ten days after the shark was first hoisted into the aquarium, it was shot at point-blank range by a group of divers who entered the tank with powerhead guns. It took 7 shots for the shark to finally sink to the bottom of the exhibit. Despite the awful ending, Manly Marineland had at least proved that those creatures still had a chance of being kept in captivity.Years then passed with very few attempts to keep a great white in aquariums around the world. However, that all changed in 1974. The reason? Jaws! The book, written by Peter Benchley, came out that year. You probably know that story, which is of a large great white shark that preys upon a small resort town near Long Island.
The thrilling book terrified and fascinated readers, spending 44 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Just one year later, Steven Spielberg released ‘Jaws’ the movie. To say that was a success would be an understatement. Over 67 million people in the U.S saw the movie after its initial release. And, just like the book, Spielberg’s movie popularized sharks as man-eating predators.It’s no wonder the fear of the species rapidly intensified! In fact, the effect was so great, scientists believe the blockbuster movie caused a generation of people to develop galeophobia an irrational fear of sharks. While Jaws scared people, it also hyped up the public’s fascination around those carnivorous critters. Aquariums quickly realized that displaying one of those real-life monsters would make them the coolest thing in town!
Unsurprisingly, in the years and months after ‘Jaws’ release, the number of great whites held in aquariums exploded. In 1976, Sea World San Diego received a young male great white that measured 5-feet long and weighed 57 pounds. But, the animal didn’t last long, passing away after just a week.Then, two years later, Sea World San Diego decided to try again. But their luck didn’t change. Once again, the shark perished after just one week. Despite the lack of success, aquariums desperately refused to give up on the idea of housing a great white. In fact, by 1980, competition was rife between Sea World San Diego and San Francisco’s, Steinhart Aquarium, with both vying to become the first aquarium to successfully exhibit a great white shark.Steinhart even created a SWAT force, no not ‘Special Weapons And Tactics’! The ‘Steinhart White Acquisition Team’ were a dedicated crew responsible for acquiring and transporting any captured great whites back to the aquarium. They also constructed an elaborate transport tank with a harness and I.V fluids, give the sharks the best possible treatment while in transport.
Meanwhile, Sea World San Diego had cargo trucks fitted with temperature-controlled containers, as well as oxygenated jets that’d keep water gently coursing over the shark’s gills, helping them to breathe as they were transported to the aquarium. In August 1980, the SWAT force drove over to Bodega Bay to pick up a 7-foot, 300-pound female great white that’d been trapped in a fisherman’s net.Nicknamed Sandy, the shark actually remained in captivity for a grand total of 3 days, before being released back out into the Pacific Ocean! Yes, all that effort, plus a dedicated SWAT team, and still, they couldn’t successfully keep a great white in an aquarium!
The reason? Well, Sandy was put into a relatively small 100,000-gallon tank. Despite the comparatively slender size, the tank was shaped like a doughnut, allowing the shark to swim round without constantly hitting the aquarium's walls. However, an even greater problem was the tank’s faulty maintenance system. That put tiny electrical shocks on one side of the tank. When Sandy reached the electrified spot, she turned away or sank to the bottom.
One year after Sandy’s release from Steinhart, Sea World San Diego decided to have another go. The 5-foot,100-pound shark was caught by a fisherman off the coast of San Diego, before being transported to the aquarium. There, it was kept in a 400,000-gallon exhibit. The specimen survived its first few days in captivity, but after a few days passed without the shark feeding, marine scientists decided to inject the animal with nutrients.Eventually, a week went by with the shark still in-tact. Then, it broke the 10 day-record previously set by Manly Marineland! But that wasn’t all good news. The shark was still refusing to eat on its own. Not long after, it began to show difficulty swimming.Finally, after a strenuous 16-day battle, it all became too much, and the great white perished. Sea World San Diego’s record-breaking attempt showed it was possible for a shark to survive a couple of weeks in captivity albeit, without it actually eating. Yet, it’d been 26 years since the first great white was put into captivity, and still not a single specimen had thrived.After opening in 1984, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California wanted to join the ‘great white in captivity’ party. In August of that year, a 4-foot 10-inch shark that was tangled in a fisherman’s net off the coast of California was placed into one of the tanks at Monterey Bay Aquarium. But new aquarium, same old problems.
That particular shark survived for 11 days, before perishing due to its refusal to eat. Whether the Jaws-frenzy was dying down, or aquariums finally realized the impossibility of keeping healthy great whites in tanks, attempts to keep great white's captive began grinding to a halt. It took until 2004 for the next notable attempt; 20 years after their first try, Monterey Bay Aquarium was ready for round 2!But they’d learned from their last round of mistakes! In 1996, the aquarium finished construction on their $110 million Outer Bay exhibit. To say that aquarium was big would be an understatement! In all, the Outer Bay tank measures 90-feet long, 35-feet deep, and holds a mind-blowing 1 million gallons of water!
That means that exhibit has over 50% the water capacity of an Olympic swimming pool! But Monterey Bay’s efforts extended far beyond the size of their exhibit. Any sharks that were captured would first be placed into a 4 million gallon,130-foot wide, and 36-foot deep ocean net pen, which was anchored off the coast of California.That allowed the sharks to recover from the stress of being captured, and begin feeding again, before being moved into the main tank. After the sharks were determined to be healthy and regularly feeding in the pen, they’d be transported to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.The sharks were transported in a 3,200-gallon mobile tank, allowing them to swim, and breathe. Ironically, everyone held their breath as the first great white arrived at the exhibit in 2004, after spending 13 days at the open-ocean pen. To the amazement of researchers, the shark started swimming well, showing signs that it was relaxed and content.
Monterey Bay Aquarium: Great White Shark in Action by traviswilkins92 Even better, the shark was eating, happily adapting to the diet of salmon and mackerel that was thrown into the tank. It soon broke the previous 16-day captivity survival record, staying at the Outer Bay exhibit for an incredible 198 days!But what happened then? Well, the shark started doing a little too well! During its 6 month stay, it had grown from 4-feet 7-inches to 6-feet. That’s when it started to develop a taste for its tankmates, snacking on smaller soupfin sharks that also populated the Outer Bay exhibit!
Being too large to handle safely, they had no option but to release it. Over the next few years, the Monterey Bay Aquarium followed the same lengthy process with 5 other young great white sharks. One shark was released at 11 days after not feeding. However, the other four all stayed in the aquarium for over 50 days, with one even lasting an impressive 152 days in the Outer Bay exhibit before being released!Finally, an aquarium had shown they could successfully keep a great white in captivity! But, even with the enormous effort and cost taken to make that work, the aquarium still had its problems. As we’ve learned, the sharks that remained in the tank for months grew to such a size where they could feast on their fellow tankmates.
On top of that, the growing sharks also began to develop sores and cuts from bumping into the sides of the tank. Even a 1-million gallon tank wasn’t big enough! Still, compared to the fate of captive sharks in the years before, the Monterey Bay great white project was seen as an overwhelming success.You’d think that’d be where our great white story ends. But no. In 2016, the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan took on a huge 11-foot 5-inch great white caught in a fisherman’s net. That was the only adult great white to ever be put on display. Yet, despite the size, the shark was dropped into a 185,000-gallon tank, less than a fifth of the capacity of the Outer Bay exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium Great White Shark in Captivity by Muriel Collins Despite the success seen in putting sharks into open ocean pens prior to their transport, there was no record of that at Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. Instead, it’s likely the shark was taken from the fisherman and transported straight to the aquarium. Inevitably, the great white had difficulties adjusting to its cramped home, repeatedly colliding with the walls, and refusing food. Tragically after just 3 days, it perished, becoming the last great white in captivity.But, there’s actually another captive great white. Rosie, as she’s affectionately been nicknamed, can be found at the Crystal World Exhibition Centre in Australia. But Rosie isn’t a normal captive great white, she’s a preserved specimen that died after becoming caught in fishing nets in 1997. Still, alive or not, getting up close and personal with that face is sure to leave you with sleepless nights.
So, after around 70 years, and more than 30 attempts, no aquarium has been able to keep one of those powerful predators in a tank for more than 198 days. So, why was keeping those marine monsters alive such an impossible task?That's because Great whites can grow to more than 20 feet long and fish that big need gigantic tanks, however most great whites put into captivity were young, as they’re smaller in size. Yet, despite that, even young great whites need huge tanks because their migratory nature means they swim a lot, with some sharks travelling over 12,000 miles in just 9 months.Considering no glass tank is ever going to be big enough to keep up with the massive migratory habits of those beasts, great whites will often scrape and bump into the tank’s glass walls as they’re unable to see or sense the glass. On top of that, those guys are obligate ram ventilators, which, if you’ve forgotten, means they need to consistently swim in order to breathe.While there’s no exact science on the minimum size tank those guys need to be kept in, it’s definitely true that the bigger the better. So, it’s no surprise the gigantic 1-million gallon Outer Bay exhibit at Monterey Bay was the only aquarium that had any real success keeping great whites.
But tanks aren’t the only aspect of captivity that affects the breathing of those sharks. The majority of great whites captured for display were caught in gill nets. That is a large wall of netting that hangs in the sea, designed to trap and catch fish. But that unsustainable way of fishing can also snare other marine wildlife, including great whites!
That leaves them stuck motionless in the netting until the gill nets are pulled to the surface. Being stuck and unmoving already puts their ability to ventilate the water over their gills in jeopardy, and even worse, in a panic, great whites may try to thrash their way out of the netting, which can deplete their energy reserves.Studies have shown that sharks rapidly use up energy reserves during rigorous muscular activity. So, the result of gill nets holding great whites stationary, unable to breathe, coupled with their depleted energy reserves, can be fatal. In some cases, sharks can even suffer respiratory failure if they’re caught in netting long enough.
Even great whites that aren’t captured by gillnets can still be severely impacted by their transport to the aquarium. Often, like was the case at Manly Marineland in 1968, those beasts are carried into the back of a truck, where they’re placed into an open water tank with inadequate water filtration.
What’s worse, the colossal critters could be carpooling for hours, as they’re taken from their capture location to the aquarium. For some, the capture and transport of great whites is the primary reason for their failure in captivity. Aquatic biologist, John Hewitt, went as far as saying:
In most cases it could be said that all these captive sharks were merely in the process of dying, with some taking longer than others.Thanks to Jaws, and more recently The Meg, a movie where a gigantic and extinct Megalodon shark attacks Jason Statham in a deep-sea submersible, people think of most sharks as bloodthirsty beasts that’ll do anything to chow down on humans. As a result, it’s commonly believed great whites aren’t found in captivity because they’re too violent, likely to ram their way through the glass to munch on any human they lock their beady black eyes with, you’ll be glad to know, that was never the case.But what seems to be the biggest problem no aquarium’s been able to overcome, is footing the actual cost of keeping a great white captive. Just procuring the shark in the first place is extremely expensive. Take the Steinhart Aquarium, who, in 1980 paid a fisherman close to $20,000 adjusted for inflation for a captured great white.On top of that, Steinhart also paid the fisherman nearly $2,000 for every day the shark was at the aquarium. Unfortunately for the fisherman, that particular great white only lasted 3 days at Steinhart before it had to be released. So, in total, that means Steinhart Aquarium forked out around $26,000 all for just 3 days of having it on display.But that’s not the half of it. The most expensive aspect of keeping a great white captive is constructing a tank big enough to house one. As we’ve seen, the ginormous 1 million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit at Monterey Bay has been the only aquarium to successfully keep a great white captive for an extended length of time.
But obviously, building such a titanic tank comes at an eye-watering price. As we know, the Outer Bay exhibit cost the Monterey Bay Aquarium over $110 million! But again, that wasn’t big enough in the long run, if an aquarium wanted a tank big enough to house a shark at its full 20 ft length, they’d need something at least 3 or 4 times that size which would cost more than $500 million to build!Those sized tanks do already exist in the Chimelong Spaceship in China, for example, has a tank with a capacity of 6 million gallons that’s more than enough space. However, those sharks have a track record of attacking their tankmates, so that would be a huge amount of space to dedicate to just one fish that doesn’t have any guarantee of living past the 3-day mark!
Largest aquarium tank in the world, Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, Hengqin, China - with MUSIC by Slow Visuals Aquariums also have to factor in the transport of the shark, food and any medical bills if it were to become ill. Basically, those guys are swimming debt machines. The only thing scarier than a great white is the price of keeping one captive! In more recent years, another concern regarding great whites in captivity has popped up.In 2016, the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium faced backlash from PETA, the animal rights activists, for causing the death of the shark. The popularity of recent documentaries like ‘Blackfish’, has highlighted the cruelty of holding big marine animals like Orcas in captivity.
Regarding great whites, it’s hard to argue that the capturing, transporting, and housing of those animals in tanks that’ll never match the size of the ocean isn’t cruel. Despite all that, keeping great whites captive doesn’t always have to be inhumane. The Monterey Bay Aquarium demonstrated that under the right conditions, those sharks can actually thrive and grow in captivity, while teaching visitors that they aren’t actually as evil or dangerous as they might believe.So, with no great whites currently living in captivity, will we see the return of those sharks to aquariums in the future? Well, sorry to disappoint any shark enthusiasts, but it’s unlikely. The enormous effort and cost it took Monterey Bay aquarium to successfully keep those beasts in a tank shows the scale of the task. And even then, they could only house juvenile great whites.If any aquariums want to exhibit a fully-grown great white, they’ll have to construct a tank far larger, and costlier, than the already enormous Outer Bay exhibit at Monterey Bay dedicated solely to one big fish. Sounds like a pretty impossible ask, doesn’t it? With all that, looks like the best aquarium to keep a great white in is a natural one, the ocean!If you were amazed at what happened to great white sharks in captivity, you might want to read about the
shark alpha mystery! Thanks for reading.
