Eight School shark pups have been born at the Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World, after their mother was wounded by a Broadnose Sevengill shark.

Animal keepers at the public aquarium didn’t even know the female School shark was pregnant, and was amazed to see four tiny sharks swim out of the gouge. When the female was treated for her injury, four more shark pups were found inside her.

Despite being born prematurely, all eight shark pups are healthy. They have been transferred to a predator free area and will be raised by Kelly Tarlton’s curator team until they are strong enough to be released into the wild, something which will probably happen within 6-8 weeks. The pups are currently being fattened up on a diet of herring and mullet.

Interestingly enough, the aggressive Broadnose Sevengill shark may actually have saved the lives of the School shark pups by attacking their mother and forcing them to enter the world prematurely.

“Ironically the fight their mother got into probably saved these pups’ lives! Sharks don’t have maternal instincts and just birth or ‘drop’ their babies and swim off – leaving them incredibly vulnerable. Because we didn’t know she was pregnant, and she would be most likely to give birth at night, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to the pups in time to move them to a safe, predator free area,” said Marine Biologist Andrew Christie, curator at the aquarium.

Larry, a 3-foot-long Tawny nurse shark (Nebrius ferrugineus) has been moved from his cramped dwellings in a Burbank pet store to the Birch Aquarium, a public aquarium and museum capable of offering him much more spacious accommodations. The Birch Aquarium is a part of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, which in turn is part of the University of California in San Diego.

Larry’s move to a new home is the result of Burbank resident Stephanie Field spotting Larry at the Scales ‘n’ Tails pet shop in Burbank.

“I swore to him I would get him out of there”, Field said.

After discussing the situation with PETA and an animal shelter, Field went back to the store to talk to the owner Vahe Issaian. She had decided to purchase Larry and set him free in the ocean off the coast of California, but Issaian explained to her that doing so would only serve to kill the shark.

“That’s when I found out Vahe is a really good guy,” Field said.

As it turned out, Issaian had been trying to find a new home for Larry for quite some time but without any success. Issaian had first brought him to his pet store in 2001 when Larry’s owner left for military service and could care for his big fish any longer. In 2002, Larry was purchased by a couple from Valencia with whom he stayed until 2008.

“They had it for five years, and I picked it up in mid-2008 because they were remodelling their home and didn’t have an eight-foot wall for the aquarium,” Issaian said.

Since then, Larry had been living at Issaian’s other Burbank store, Millenium Pets. Trying to find a new home for a shark that can reach a length of 10 feet (3 metre) is not the easiest thing in the world since few people have enough space to devote to such a gigantic pet.

Finally, it was Field’s mother who suggested calling the Australian Consulate and this set the wheels in motion. After talking to the consulate on Wednesday morning, Field received an e-mail that same day telling her that progress had been made and that she could stop making calls.

On Tuesday, assistant curator Fernando Nosratpour picked up Larry from the pet shop and moved him to his new home. Larry will now spend two weeks in quarantine before he’s introduced to the other sharks.

Always research pets before you buy them

Adult Tawny nurse sharks can reach a length of 10 feet (3 metres) and getting a nurse shark for your hobby aquarium is not a good idea unless you have a HUGE tank. Nosratpour says that the Birch Aquarium do receive offers now and then to take nurse sharks that people have bought without first researching how large they will become as adults.

“Most public aquariums can’t take them anymore,” he said. “Pet stores can’t take them, and you can’t ship them back to where they are from. But people still buy them, and that’s a problem.”

The Tawny nurse shark is found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans in a region stretching from the northern coast of Australia and almost all the way to the Red Sea. It is the only now living member of the genus Nebrius and can be distinguished form other nurse sharks by its angular fins. It is listed as “Vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The world’s first public aquarium specialising in clownfish has now opened its door for visitors. The aquarium, which is located in Taitung County in Taiwan, will eventually house 1500 clown fish from 18 different species.

The aim of the clownfish aquarium is to educate the public about clownfish life-cycles and captive breeding techniques, and specimens will be sent to the aquarium by breeders such as the Eastern Marine Biology Research Center in Taitung.

“By meeting market needs we are helping to ease the crisis of clownfish species being endangered”, says researcher and museum planner Ho Yuan-hsing. “Due to the increasing number of artificially-bred clown fish, the fishing of clownfish is no longer seen in Taiwan’s coastal areas because it is unnecessary.”

AC comment:

The movie “Finding Nemo” made a lot of people interested in getting their own “Nemo”, but few were willing to learn how to properly maintain a saltwater aquarium. Before you decide to get a clownfish, please keep in mind that these are marine fishes. Simply adding some salt to your freshwater aquarium will not make is a suitable home for marine fish; not even for the sturdy clownfish. Even though the worst Nemo-craze seems to have cooled off now, a lot of “Nemos” still face an early death in the hands of uninformed fish keepers; deaths that could have been easily prevented.