Durban - With bulbous eyes protruding from the tips of their bizarre, T-shaped heads, four very unusual sharks have gone on display in Durban’s uShaka Marine World for the first time.
Ten little scalloped hammerhead sharks were captured last year when they were just a month-old by seine netters along the Durban beachfront, but were too young and small to be placed into the shark display tanks at the uShaka aquarium.
“Big sharks eat little sharks, so we didn’t want to take that chance,” explained Seaworld director Tony McEwan.
So they were released into a section of the Point Waterfront canal system to allow them to swim, and grow, in safety. Now, 18 months later, most of the 10 hammerheads are bigger and fatter, and four of them were captured and moved to the aquarium.
But the capture team had to be careful to protect the hammerheads’ eyes, which are sensitive to injury because of their location on the extremities of their T-shaped heads.
Instead of being placed on transfer stretchers like other sharks, the young hammerheads were caught in a purse net and then carried by hand by uShaka staff to a waiting truck with a special holding tank.
To reduce the risk of the sharks bumping their eyes accidentally, plastic curtains were placed around the edge of the tank.
They were then transferred to the reef predator tank at uShaka, where three divers were on hand to shepherd the new arrivals until they learnt the layout of their new home.
McEwan said he was confident that the four arrivals were big enough to look after themselves in the new environment that they would share with a young ragged-tooth shark and several adult black-tip, silver-tip and tawny nurse sharks.
“This is the first time we have had hammerheads on display at uShaka and I don’t think there are many other aquariums in the world that have this species,” said McEwan.
The four hammerheads would be monitored closely for the next few days and, if need be, returned to join their brothers and sisters in the canal holding area.
The Mercury