Captive Great White should be released

[Greatwhite70]

It would appear that the Monterey Bay Aquarium is putting profits before welfare.

The captive Great White on display for 6 months is showing signs of distress and damage to its nose as she continues to rub her nose against the sides of the tank.
You can now see the pictures I uploaded of the captive GW. The pictures are of when she arrived and now.

http://greatwhite.org/frame_captive.htm

I would be very interested to hear feed back!

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ March 28, 2005 03:40 PM: Message edited by: Great White ]</font>

[Clarky9]

Totally agree, should be released straight away.

Originally posted by Great White:
It would appear that the Monterey Bay Aquarium is putting profits before welfare.

The captive Great White on display for 6 months is showing signs of distress and damage to its nose as she continues to rub her nose against the sides of the tank.
You can now see the pictures I uploaded of the captive GW. The pictures are of when she arrived and now.

http://greatwhite.org/frame_captive.htm

I would be very interested to hear feed back!

<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ March 28, 2005 03:40 PM: Message edited by: Great White ]</font></font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

[dan13]

Is there anyway we can get a petition together of some sort because this ***** .

[Gail Mc]

I agree - some kind of petition seems like a good idea. I looked at the pictures at they are heart-wrenching!

I looked up the aquarium on the web and they say they only plan to hold the shark as long as it is healthy. Here's a link to their site:
http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/whiteshark.asp

Clearly, this is not the case though, and their most recent update suggests no moves to release it.

I, for one, would be pleased to sign a petition to stop this.

[Greatwhite70]

Hi Thanks for the feedback.

Firstly I would like to point out that the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a first rate exhibit and you can see some great stuff and learn more too.
The problem here is that the GW has been a considerable crowd pleaser, my site alone has had 25 million hits in the last year. Great Whites fascinate everyone.

The Aquarium has had the GW for over 6 months now and she is growing and would obviously have to leave at some point, she would get to big to safely handle. the other point is that she is being fed off a pole.

Which raises some interesting issues. It has been proven at Dive sites where Sharks are hand fed that they associate us as providers. Also being hand fed raises the question of will she have problems upon release!

I admit that studying one up close for a short period of time would provide some interesting data. Now though she is in an unatural enviroment.

Great Whites spend a lot of time out in deep ocean and have migration patterns.

The Aquarium welcomes feedback from people and you can comment direct to them on the web site.
http://www.mbayaq.org/sg/sg_fb_mailroom.asp