The lure of sharks - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 112

centration. The test was to run for twenty hours, which was the esti-
mated time for a real shipment of sharks from their tank in Galveston
to our tank in San Diego.
Partway through the test a man named Gerrit Klay came by. He was
an aquarist from the Cleveland Aquarium in Ohio and was down in
Galveston to collect small bonnethead sharks ( Sphyrna tiburo ) to ship
by air to his aquarium. The sixteen-or-so-inch bonnetheads, a relative
of the larger hammerheads, were small enough that they fit into large
plastic bags in standard Styrofoam shipping containers. He was very
successful with this method, and it was quite an achievement to have
bonnetheads exhibited at an inland aquarium in Ohio. Gerry Klay
showed great interest in my experimental shipping test, especially the
pump method of achieving high levels of oxygen. Two years later he
left the Cleveland Aquarium to set up his own shark collecting busi-
ness in the Florida Keys using the same transport methods he saw me
using in Galveston.
After twenty hours the bull shark was released back into the exhibit.
Although it was a little groggy for the first hour, it recovered completely
and the simulated shipping test was deemed a success.
We next planned a real shipment of three bull sharks and one lemon
shark from Galveston to San Diego. In addition, a whole menagerie of
other fishes, including seventeen alligator gars, two huge three-hundred-
pound jewfish, a beautiful giant green moray, and an assortment of
smaller fishes from the Gulf of Mexico, would be transported—all in
exchange for Sea World's one pilot whale. Of course, you don't just
buy a ticket on a passenger plane for a shipment like this, so a Flying
Tigers cargo jet was chartered to fly the pilot whale in one direction
and all the fishy creatures in the other direction. The key people, be-
sides myself, were Kym Murphy of Sea World, Tom Whitman of
Searama, and— once again relenting to my plea for help—Bob Kiwala
of Scripps. I'm sure he later regretted agreeing to come along “just for
the fun of it.”
All of our various-sized fiberglassed wooden shipping boxes had been
sent ahead to Galveston, and at midnight we set about catching the
animals in preparation for the drive to the Galveston airport and the
waiting cargo plane. The four sharks were herded into the murky water