I imagine the intention was to keep them as long as they could. They live over 50 years in the wild, and some evidence indicates even close to 100. So presumably the thought would have been "we can just get more of them way down the line, that's a problem for the future". Unfortunately the best laid plans of mice and men do not exactly always pan out. I for one hope Yushan lives that long at least, especially with all the space he now has.
Rumors tend to have some truth to them. From what I was told (from GA marine mammal trainers that were there early on), the idea came from Bernie Marcus himself. He had a strong conservation passion for them and thought he could possibly breed themhence the original design was to hold large marine animals, not necessarily whale sharks. Someone convinced him not too (the logistics alone are mind boggling) and whale sharks were chosen instead.
Which cetacean specie are we referring to?
On a somewhat similar note with all the Whale Shark talk, do you see them aiming to bring another species for the "SHARKS!" Tank? Since the departure of the Sand Tigers a while ago and I think them moving the Silky's out, that just leaves the Tiger, Great Hammerheads, and Silvertips iirc. Not that it's a bad line up of course, but they do have the space to potentially add another show stopper in my mind
Honestly if I had to guess, they probably won’t for now. From what I was told when I actually did the cage dive there, they were shuffling the lineup a lot to try and figure out exactly which composition of sharks would get along the best and have the fewest difficulties with one another. The two smaller tiger sharks were removed because of problems with the larger female, and my guess would also be that the sand tigers were removed due to overcrowding and the silkies may not have made it in general (I was told that all of them have passed away, and there was only one in Sharks! when I went, the rest were in Voyager). They have also shuffled the actual number of great hammerheads that were inside over time as well.
Monterey was the one that kept those species with their Galapagos sharks (great whites and scalloped hammerheads, the latter of which they still have). The great whites never lasted more than 198 days before being released, either due to a poor appetite/other ailments or, in the case of the first one, too voracious an appetite to the point where she ate her tank mates. But they were only ever meant to be there briefly for research and study, and to educate the public. The hammerheads do well there because the tank is very large and well designed for them, presumably, and they have a truly great husbandry and care staff. Georgia does as well for their great hammerheads.
They don’t actually like to eat people, fwiw, and the ones at MBA mostly left the divers alone. But yeah, the first female in 2004 annihilated a pair of tope sharks. In front of guests too…woof lol. It seems Georgia has mostly escaped unscathed from having their big tiger or hammerheads actually kill anything besides eating some pilchards in S: PoTD (and pretty much only exhibiting large sharks probably helps), but who knows what the future holds. I hope they don’t have to deal with that.
Yeah I had heard that haha…I’m a fan of the idea even if there are probably some people who wouldn’t wanna see the poor fishies get murked. From what I’m told by friends in the industry, pretty much any large mixed-species aquarium with schooling baitfish has to restock them at minimum every few months or so.
It looks like the GA website is slowly but surely being updated to reflect this, as they are now listed simply as "Manta Ray" on there with the scientific name "Mobula c.f. birostris". This is what the new yarae species was listed as in initial publications prior to its formal description (such as one of my favorite books, Guide to the Manta and Devil Rays of the World by Stevens et al.), so I assume the education staff over at GA is dotting their i's and crossing their t's before fully changing it over. Fun little insight into an aquarium getting new information on its holdings.