Whale sharks in captivity

Veno said:
The female whale shark is now kept in a special sea pen near the aquarium. When she becomes mature, the aquarium plans to try artificial insemination with Jinta.
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Interesting! It will be exciting to see Churaumi attempt breeding of Whale Sharks, as I believe it has never been achieved before, and they certainly have experience with breeding large chondrichthyans with their manta ray birth. I believe Churaumi's Whale Sharks are the only ones known to have exhibited sexual behaviour in a captive environment, which goes to show how successful they have been with husbandry of the species, but no actual mating has been recorded.
 
Why is the Georgia Aquarium the only aquarium in North America that keeps whale sharks? Are whale sharks really that difficult to keep?
 
Because they are:
- expensive (catching, Transportation, Food, Space etc.)
- difficult to keep (e. g. aggressive interactions between sexes as already mentioned here)
- a risk in regards of "reputation" (afaik, whale sharks are on the Red List of endagered species of IUCN, so even some gouverments would allow to catch them, the zoological institutions doing so bare the risk that animals could die during the procedure or shortly after and so they risk to be attacked from animal rights activists...)
 
zoomaniac said:
Because they are:
- expensive (catching, Transportation, Food, Space etc.)
- difficult to keep (e. g. aggressive interactions between sexes as already mentioned here)
- a risk in regards of "reputation" (afaik, whale sharks are on the Red List of endagered species of IUCN, so even some gouverments would allow to catch them, the zoological institutions doing so bare the risk that animals could die during the procedure or shortly after and so they risk to be attacked from animal rights activists...)
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I see. I remember seeing them several times at Kaiyukan when I was a child, but I didn't know whale sharks are a species with very few in captivity worldwide.
 
I imagine space and expense is a big factor (but not the only one) - Whale Sharks are an exceptionally large animal that require an enormous amount of space to do well in captivity, and a tank that large is simply unfeasible for the vast majority of aquaria due to limited floorspace and funds to construct and maintain such a large tank. Of course, actually obtaining and maintaining one or more Whale Sharks on exhibit is a whole other matter...
 
captain alligator said:
Why is the Georgia Aquarium the only aquarium in North America that keeps whale sharks? Are whale sharks really that difficult to keep?
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Everyone’s answers above are excellent. I’d zone in on the most critical issues as space and budget, before you can even consider acquiring a shark. It requires a truly enormous tank, as even though they’re slower-moving and thus perhaps less stress prone than other large sharks, they grow so large and move so much that they need plenty of room. Georgia’s tank is 6.3 million gallons, which is half a million gallons larger than the previous largest indoor tank (i.e., non outdoor cetacean pool, which would be unsuitable for whale sharks) in the United States. That tank cost upwards of $250 million to build in the early 2000s, just about all of which was provided by one donor (Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus, who funded most of the Aquarium’s construction). Inflation would likely double those construction costs today. Realistically very, very few other aquariums generate enough revenue via admissions or have a large enough endowment to pull it off. I’d say there are maybe two or three that could currently do it if they completely altered their plans for current exhibits:
  • The Seas with Nemo and Friends at Epcot, FL: Their tank was the previous largest tank in the US at 5.7 million gallons. That’s bigger than pretty much all of the facilities in Japan that keep them (Okinawa’s is just under 2 million, Osaka’s is about 1.5). It may be large and wide enough for a couple of whale sharks if they wanted to, but I imagine they’d have to alter some of the scaping to accommodate.
  • Shedd Aquarium, Chicago: Their Oceanarium is a total of 3 million gallons. It currently holds belugas and Pacific white-sided dolphins, and that’s what it’s designed for, but whale sharks have been held in similar tanks in Japan before. It is fairly wide and large and theoretically could allow for the sharks to do proper circuits. It also could be climate-controlled unlike just about every other ocean/dolphinarium-style tank in the US.
  • Monterey Bay Aquarium, CA: They have a 1.2 million gallon Open Sea tank which could theoretically house a single whale shark, but it’s really not wide enough in my view as it’s designed for more of a vertical pelagic animal assortment.
That being said, I really don’t think any of these aquaria would actually bother to do it. Monterey focuses on Californian animals and whale sharks are very rarely seen here. The dolphins and whales are a huge draw for Shedd in terms of attendance, as they’re the only ones of their species in the Midwest any longer. Disney also is probably the most optics-focused company running an aquarium and they surely wouldn’t want to risk failing. I think it would take a brand-new aquarium with truly massive funding that has an explicit goal to attempt it.
 
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