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distance cruising in a mostly straight line with a very low expenditure
of energy and need for food. In its own environment, this design is
very e‹cient, but I had created a tank that forced them to be constantly
turning. Their metabolism was simply not designed for that much en-
ergy expenditure.
Our success with makos was almost zero but for di¤erent reasons.
Makos are like the race car of the shark world: they need to actively
swim at all times to stay alive. Just supplying them with lots of oxygen
as we did with the blue sharks was not enough. After only forty-five
minutes in transport they were barely alive when we arrived at the shark
tank, and they died shortly afterward. Apparently the rhythmic con-
tractions of the muscles during swimming play a vital role in the cir-
culation of the blood of the mako shark.
Our lack of success caused us to terminate the research into local Cal-
ifornia sharks. Today, thirty years later, there still has been only mixed
results displaying blue sharks. However, it is still possible they may do
well in a much larger, correctly designed tank that has long straight runs
and no turns except at the ends. Blues are one of the most beautiful and
graceful of all the sharks, and it would be wonderful if they could be
kept in good health in a large aquarium somewhere. Hopefully some-
one, somewhere, will have the opportunity to try it. Showing aquar-
ium visitors the beauty of the blue shark may help stop the killing of
hundreds of thousands every year for shark-fin soup, or as unwanted
by-catch in the worldwide open-ocean longline and gill-net fisheries.
FLYING TEXAS SHARKS
With the end of our experimental work with local temperate-water
sharks, we turned our attention to East Coast warm-water species that
we knew did well in aquariums. The only problem was, they were three
thousand miles away. How could we get them all the way to the West
Coast? As luck would have it, an opportunity soon came along to test
the feasibility of shipping tropical species of sharks by air.
Sea World was negotiating the trade of a pilot whale to the Searama
oceanarium in Galveston, Texas. Searama had a number of bull sharks
and lemon sharks in their large central tank that they had collected
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