Oceanic Whitetip Shark Exhibit

[Komodo99]

I'm creating this thread to discuss and design an exhibit for an Oceanic Whitetip shark and possibly other open ocean dwelling species.From records only one Oceanic Whitetip, a female survived for more than a year in captivity at the Monterey Bay Aquarium from 2000 to 2003.

Because of the nature and habitat of the shark,various factors will need to be taken into account.These include temperature,space,depth,feeding methods and enclosure maintenance(I know these are standard procedures anyway,but considering the species will need to be carefully thought of).

Here is my enclosure design(based off of Monterey Bay Aquarium's Open Ocean exhibit)
Animals housed
4XOceanic Whitetip
Gallons of Water(1'000'000 Imperial Gallons)
30+feet of reinforced Acrylic Glass
Depths of up to 150 Meters(To replicate natural conditions)
Temperatures between 68 and 82 Fahrenheit
All sharks will have off show tanks that are about 27 feet long horizontally and 20 feet Vertically with depths of 75.5 Meters to accommodate the animals length and will be set up in a "racetrack" style to prevent the sharks from bumping their snouts.
The main enclosure will be a large tank of at least 35-37 feet long both vertically and horizontally.

Those are just my specifications at the moment.I do realise that the keeping of this species in any sort of aquarium is highly unlikely to happen but I am thinking of creativity here and I may be wrong but I am open to criticism.Feel free to let me know what you think.

 

[CGSwans]

150 metres?

Do you realise that's the height of a 50 storey building?

 

[Chlidonias]

yeah, your measurements are confusing, with the mix of feet and metres. And why are you using Fahrenheit??

But what I find most confusing is that you appear to have a tank with a depth of 150 metres [492 feet] but only 35 to 37 feet [about eleven metres] long and wide...

EDIT: I just realised you're using "depth" in a confusing context, but your measurements are still strange.

 

[Hyak_II]

First off, the stress from moving your sharks on and off exhibit is going to kill them long before anything else does.

Secondly, having a raceway style setup is going to do little in terms of helping the sharks avoid abrasions from contact with walls. I've worked with several different species, including other species of requiem sharks, and your best bet is circular or ovoid, not long and skinny. Assuming you mean your tanks are actually 75.5 meters in length (250 feet, by the way, is excessive) by 27 feet wide, you would be much better off with of system of...say...100x75 feet in a wide ended oval. The biggest issue the truly pelagic sharks run into is their absolute lack of being able to negotiate walls at first, so in a tank that would require anything more than a gentle curve, your going to have sharks smacking the sides for a while.

Additionally, your temperature wings are just going to get your sharks sick. In the wild they are used to these temperature swings, however they are healthy and able to travel through the water column to reach different temps. In your tanks, swinging the temps around are just going to stress out your already stressed sharks and open them up to bacterial infections. A 14 degree Fahrenheit swing is HUGE (7 degree swing for us on the metric system, which you in the UK are??). You'd be better off keeping them at a stable temp the lower end of the spectrum.

I could continue to pluck away at every point you've made, but I'm not a complete ass, after all, just a guy who has some actual shark husbandry experience under his belt

 

[Komodo99]

First off, the stress from moving your sharks on and off exhibit is going to kill them long before anything else does.

Secondly, having a raceway style setup is going to do little in terms of helping the sharks avoid abrasions from contact with walls. I've worked with several different species, including other species of requiem sharks, and your best bet is circular or ovoid, not long and skinny. Assuming you mean your tanks are actually 75.5 meters in length (250 feet, by the way, is excessive) by 27 feet wide, you would be much better off with of system of...say...100x75 feet in a wide ended oval. The biggest issue the truly pelagic sharks run into is their absolute lack of being able to negotiate walls at first, so in a tank that would require anything more than a gentle curve, your going to have sharks smacking the sides for a while.

Additionally, your temperature wings are just going to get your sharks sick. In the wild they are used to these temperature swings, however they are healthy and able to travel through the water column to reach different temps. In your tanks, swinging the temps around are just going to stress out your already stressed sharks and open them up to bacterial infections. A 14 degree Fahrenheit swing is HUGE (7 degree swing for us on the metric system, which you in the UK are??). You'd be better off keeping them at a stable temp the lower end of the spectrum.

I could continue to pluck away at every point you've made, but I'm not a complete ass, after all, just a guy who has some actual shark husbandry experience under his belt

Thank you for your input,I'm not expert on shark husbandry but I thought that the enclosure had to be modified to they don't bump their snouts into the glass.I kind of went off of dimensions for other open water sharks that had been built in the past such as Monterey Bay Aquarium's attempts at keeping Great White Sharks but I think I went overboard with everything.

 

[temp]

From records only one Oceanic Whitetip, a female survived for more than a year in captivity at the Monterey Bay Aquarium from 2000 to 2003.

Often claimed, but incorrect. Waikiki kept it for 1.3 year, Bahamas 1.4 year and Jakarta's were almost certainly kept more than a year based on growth reports (likely around 2 years). That's pretty remarkable since all but Monterey's were some 20-30 years ago. Although they may exist, I am not aware of any attempts that resulted in rapid failure, as typical of e.g., blue and mako. As I've mentioned before, the few reports suggest that the oceanic whitetip is rather similar to others in the genus Carcharhinus and nothing like the extremely difficult "true" pelagics like mako and blue.