Two sandbar sharks which died at the Dingle Ocean World Aquarium in Co Kerry after a heating malfunction are unlikely to be replaced because the remaining sharks could turn on any newcomers, the director of the facility, Mr Kevin Flannery, said yesterday.
The deaths, which occurred after the water temperature rose because of an electronic fault, represent a loss of about $10,000 (£8,130), he said. "It is a nasty thing. These are the things that occur when you are dealing with live animals," he said. Following representations made to the then US Ambassador, Ms Jean Kennedy Smith, the sharks, natives of Florida, were sedated and airlifted to the Republic by the US airforce in 1998, along with three tiger sharks. Mr Flannery said the tiger sharks, along with two stingrays survived the temperature surge. The sharks are accustomed to tropical water temperatures of 21
Celsius but are extremely sensitive to any heat change.
It would be difficult to replace them, he added, because they had grown to over 6 ft. "The sharks in the tanks are quite big and if you introduced small sharks into them now, they might get aggressive towards them. We have had offers from other aquariums who have an excess of sharks. We are looking at that, but they have to be the same size." He said a control system had been installed in the 400,000-gallon tank to alert staff in future to any sudden temperature changes. The sandbar shark, which favours shallow waters, has been found as far north as New York Harbour. In Europe, it has been found in the canals of Venice.
Mr Flannery, a Department of the Marine fisheries inspector, said worldwide stocks of shark were becoming rapidly depleted, largely because of the craze for shark-fin soup in Asian countries and a huge number of sharks are being killed worldwide on a daily basis.