Sharkfest at Tennessee Aquarium blends pop culture, science

The Tennessee Aquarium's Secret Reef exhibit is home to four sand tiger sharks.
The Tennessee Aquarium's Secret Reef exhibit is home to four sand tiger sharks.

If you go

› What: Sharkfest.› When: 6-8:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 5.› Where: Tennessee Aquarium, 1 Broad St.› Admission: $29.95 adults, $18.95 children 3-12 (Sharkfest activities are free with admission).› Phone: 1-800-262-0695.› Website: www.tnaqua.org.

Did you know?

› The Tennessee Aquarium’s Secret Reef exhibit is currently home to four sand tiger sharks and two sandbar sharks. Both have the typical gray or brownish coloring and body style people associate with sharks.› Sand tigers are the toothier of the two species with a row of jagged teeth that can be seen even when their mouths are closed. A sand tiger can lose thousands of teeth over a lifetime. Each time one is lost, another takes its place.› The sandbars, also known as brown sharks, swim much faster and are more agile than sand tiger sharks.› Sand tiger sharks can grow up to 10 feet in length; sandbars can reach a length of 8 feet.› Aquarium experts have target-trained the sharks to eat fish offered at the end of a long pole, which is lowered into the top of the exhibit. Both species are offered food three times a week. They receive mackerel or bonita that is fortified with a nutritionally complete supplement (sort of like a shark multivitamin).› The amount of food offered to the sharks is closely monitored and recorded to make sure each individual shark is fed enough to stay satiated. This decreases the chance of the sharks making a meal of their tank mates.› Four other species of sharks can be seen (and touched) in the Tropical Cove. In the Stingray Bay touch tank are epaulette sharks, coral catsharks, horn sharks and a Port Jackson shark.

Sharkfest at the Tennessee Aquarium offers more than a chance to get an eye-catching hairstyle and a fierce tattoo.

Kids will surely jump in line for those enticements, but the after-hours event Friday, Aug. 5, also is a chance to learn about efforts to protect sharks, talk to scuba divers who swim with the fishes (while they're underwater), examine a large collection of prehistoric megalodon shark teeth and even touch a few bizarre-looking shark specimens.

An added bonus is a visit by the Chattanooga filmmakers who produced "Shark Clans," a top-rated documentary about great white sharks that aired during Discovery Channel's Shark Week 2015.

The tattoos are tough but temporary. The hairstyles can be mermaid or "shark hawk" (think mohawk with a shark fin bent). The Sharkfest frenzy concludes with a frozen treat from Coldstone Creamery.

Visitors will learn that the aquarium's Secret Reef exhibit is home to four sand tiger sharks. Sand tigers were once abundant in the temperate ocean waters of the world, except the eastern Pacific, but like almost all shark species their numbers are declining rapidly in the wild, mainly because of pressure from fishing.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Fisheries Service, sand tiger populations along the U.S. East Coast dropped 90 percent during the 1980s and 1990s before protections were put in place.

"Sand tiger sharks are relatively easy to catch, but they reproduce very slowly," says Jackson Andrews, the aquarium's director of husbandry and operations. "Females don't reach reproductive maturity until they are 5 or 6 years of age. They reproduce every other year, and when they do reproduce, they have up to two pups at a time. So it's easy to see how their numbers have plummeted over time."

Protecting these sharks means learning more about their somewhat mysterious movements throughout the year. Ocearch, a global leader in shark research, launched an expedition in June to tag up to 30 mature female sand tigers with a goal of learning more about their breeding and pupping habits. Using an Ocearch vessel, scientists from Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, Florida Aquarium, North Carolina Aquariums, SeaWorld, Southeast Zoo Alliance for Reproductive Conservation and the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, spent nearly 10 days tagging sharks off the coast of North Carolina.

The Tennessee Aquarium was a partner in the project, providing support to purchase the acoustic tags that were implanted in the sharks.

"These tags were very similar to the acoustic tags we are using to monitor the movement of lake sturgeon in the Tennessee River," says Andrews. "Each time a tagged shark passes by a receiving station, information about that animal is recorded. Project managers will get data over a relatively long period of time."

The new information will help define habitats that sand tiger sharks use for breeding, gestation and pupping. Identifying these critical zones is considered an important first step for conservation.

"Comparing habitat use of pregnant and non-pregnant mature females may highlight areas for proper management and directly benefit the sand tiger mid-Atlantic population," says Madeline Marens, lead scientist and aquarist with the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher.

This is one of many new initiatives aquariums are launching as part of the Association of Zoos and Aquarium's Saving Animals From Extinction (AZA SAFE) program. The multiplier effect of collaborative conservation work helps improve the status of many species that are disappearing.

Guests can register for Sharkfest online at https://community.tnaqua.org/events/member-programs/summer/2016/shark-fest-2016.

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