i've been to this aquarium!!! that must have been extremely scary!! http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louis...A--AquariumAccident&&news&newsflash-louisiana Platform at aquarium falls, dumps people into shark tank The Associated Press 8/7/02 11:37 PM NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A platform at the Aquarium of the Americas collapsed Wednesday evening, dumping 10 people straight into a tank teeming with sharks. There were no serious injuries reported, but two people were taken to Tulane University Hospital for minor cuts and bruises they sustained after hitting artificial barnacles as they fell, aquarium spokeswoman Melissa Lee said. The accident happened while members of the aquarium were on an after-hours behind-the-scenes tour. The platform they were standing on is used by keepers to feed the sharks and is not usually open to the general public, Lee said. The steel footbridge in the Gulf of Mexico exhibit allows visitors to peer down into a 400,000 gallon tank home to everything from a few dozen nurse and sand tiger sharks to turtles, schools of redfish and stingrays. Erin Rooney, 14, was on the catwalk with her family when it collapsed. "It just cracked. We held onto the bars and swam to the sides," she told WVUE-TV. Her father, Dan Rooney, was frantically searching for his 2-year-old grandchild, when he saw someone hand the toddler to another person on the stable part of the catwalk. "I was just praying none of the sharks got agitated from all of the splashing and everything. I mean, they got sharks in there bigger than me," he said. Though at 10-feet long and 400 pounds the sharks may seem intimidating, they had already been fed and are generally docile, Lee said. The sharks are used to seeing divers in their tank on a regular basis, but seeing so many people tumble in at once was probably startled them, Lee said. "I've been told they took off and went to the other side of the exhibit," she said. Staffers at the aquarium are trained to deal with emergencies like this one, Lee said, and reacted quickly to the chaotic scene, pulling people from the waters using nearby flotation devices. "They knew exactly what to do and they did it," she said
Lets just say that its a good thing Great Whites cant live in captivity or this could have been REAL interesting.
Heh, I bet they came close to losing bowel control. We went to that aquarium at New Years and they told us, as they mentioned in the article, that the sharks are docile as long as they are full. Otherwise the other fish in the tank wouldn't live for long =). They did tell us that you could get seriously hurt by the swordfish's bill. Oh, and there wouldn't exactly be room for a great white in that tank.
MadMax Great whites cant survive in captivity because of their size and need of space but even in huge tanks, great whites would probably run into electrical problems. The Monterey Bay Aquarium proposes that electromagnetic fields in steel and concrete tanks may confuse the sharks' delicate navigational systems. Great whites can pick up electrical charges as small as 0.005 microvolts, or the electrical energy generated by a beating heart or a gill action. I saw a Discovery special where they tried to keep a baby white and it just kept declining and finally died. They said despite every effort any time they try to keep one it dies.
i saw jawas once..but that was a different movie, i think. (yes..i've seen jaws...didn't remember the zoological tidbits so much though! i was pretty young and all i remember is that it didn't scare me as much as it scared others...i love the beach too much to stop going!)
I'm a bit of a shark fanatic. I am saving up to go to South Africa one day go on the tour and actually see a White Pointer.
Diving?...Sharks?...Jaws?... Before I came to the states I was fearless underwater. I would swim through schools of barracuda...shoot at sharks (yep, lost one very expensive CO2 cartridge spear gun pulling that stunt). Okay, maybe I was more ignorant than fearless. I get here and watch a shark movie. Now, Ive back peddle off a 1.5ft barracuda on Palancar Reef in Cozumel. That sickened me....or am I smarter. RR
