Cape Town – The Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town will be releasing the last of its ragged-tooth sharks near East London this week, the aquarium announced on Monday.
Two Oceans Assistant Communications and Sustainability Manager Renée Leeuwner said the last two ragged-tooth sharks, which formed part of its current I&J Predator Exhibit, would be removed from the exhibition on Tuesday and released into the ocean near East London on Wednesday.
The other sharks were released on May 24.
Leeuwner said on Tuesday at around 9am, “aquarium staff will remove the two ragged-tooth sharks from the I&J Predator Exhibit and divers will manoeuvre each shark into a transparent PVC cone.”
“Once secured, the shark will be moved to a holding tank that has been placed into the exhibit and from there, the sharks will be moved to a 6 000 litre holding tank on the back of a transport truck.”
Leeuwner said the truck and tank were “fitted with complete life support systems that will maintain water quality during the journey along the coast to East London.”
She said the team would ensure that the water was changed along the way to ensure “water quality remains at an optimum”.
The sharks, said Leeuwner, were being released because the I&J Predator Exhibit was closing for repairs in mid-June and a new, large-scale exhibit, the I&J Ocean Exhibit would be opened.
Operations Manager Tinus Beukes said the aquarium had been releasing sharks since 2004 and each shark had been “tagged with internal VEMCO multi-purpose transmitters”.
“These transmitters have a 10-year battery-lifespan and will transmit to various acoustic monitoring receivers that are dotted along the southern African coast.”
Beukes said the transmitters would enable the aquarium to “receive data from these transmitters for the next 10 years and through that will continue to contribute to the scientific research being conducted on sharks around the southern African coast”.
African News Agency