Aquarium helps spur research into whale shark

Posted: Sunday, February 17, 2008

ATLANTA - In captivity, a 25-foot whale shark glides gracefully above a throng of enthralled tourists who hurriedly snap pictures from inside a clear tunnel at the Georgia Aquarium's giant six-million-gallon Ocean Voyager tank.

In the wild, whale sharks live much more hidden lives. Little is known about how much they eat, where they swim and where they give birth.

But since the Atlanta attraction opened in 2005, more than 5 million guests have helped generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for new research into whale sharks - revealing new details about their nutrition, roaming habits and numbers.

Aquarium executive director Jeff Swanagan once quipped that the sea's largest fish, which can reach more than 27 feet in length and weigh a couple of tons, are the least known by marine researchers.

So the world's largest aquarium didn't start with a manual on how best to handle its four whale sharks, more than are held in any other aquarium in the world.

" 'Whale Sharks for Dummies'? The book hasn't been written. We're kind of writing it as we go along," says Bruce Carlson, the aquarium's chief science officer.

But aquarium officials set out to learn more, investing in research projects on the whale shark in Mexico and Taiwan. Satellite tags on the Mexico whale sharks have helped track them from the Yucatan Peninsula across the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Florida and the Caribbean.

"We learn more about the animals we're caring for, and we can care for them better," said Carlson. "Other people have funded research, but really, the major whale shark funding comes from us."

Carlson declined to say exactly how much the aquarium has spent on whale shark research but said it was in the "hundreds of thousands of dollars."

He and other researchers hope other studies answer more questions about whale sharks' lives: Where do they travel and how much do they eat? The mating behavior of the animals never has been observed, nor do researchers know where the whale sharks give birth.

"This collaboration with the Georgia Aquarium is so exciting - it's the first opportunity to really unravel what these animals are doing in this hemisphere," said Robert Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at the Sarasota, Fla., Mote Marine Laboratory, which collaborates with the aquarium and Mexico officials. "We are able to not only work on these animals in the wild, but have access to the four animals there in the aquarium."

Aquarium-sponsored research, released last Tuesday, tracked a 25-foot female whale shark that traveled 4,500 miles from Isla Holbox in Mexico to the other side of the Equator, halfway between Brazil and Africa.

"This is the first evidence of a whale shark moving from the mid-Atlantic to the South Atlantic that we know of," Hueter said.

The aquarium's captive whale sharks - males Yushan and Taroko, and females Alice and Trixie - also have yielded important information for researchers. Studying them allows researchers to do things "that you can't do in the ocean," Carlson said.

For example, every few months, the aquarium takes blood samples from the whale sharks to better understand their health and state of maturity.

The aquarium also developed a technique to hoist the animals in a sling, which now is used by researchers in the field.

Even last year's deaths of Ralph and Norton - whale sharks that were among the aquarium's first stars when it opened - allowed researchers to learn more about the animals' eye and gill structure.

The whale sharks' deaths prompted concerns about how to properly transport and care for the animals or whether they should be kept in captivity at all. Aquarium officials have said having the whale sharks increases knowledge about the species and gives people in the U.S. a rare chance to learn about them. The aquarium is the only location outside Asia that has whale sharks in captivity.

"It was a tragic event, but from the purely scientific point of view, it was a golden opportunity to understand the anatomy of a whale shark," Carlson said.

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