News

For the third time, we've said farewell to a young white shark after it spent a few months with us on exhibit. The male shark was released in Monterey Bay on February 5, 162 days after he was placed in our Outer Bay exhibit.

He carries two electronic tags: one that will relay near real-time data about his travels for about eight months, and a second that will collect detailed information on his movements for the next five months.

Data from the second tag, documenting where the shark goes, how deep he dives and the water temperatures he favors, will be relayed to scientists via satellite when the tag pops free in early July.

The shark had grown from an initial size of 4-foot, 9-inches and 67 ½ pounds when it arrived on August 28, 2007 to its current size of 5-foot, 10-inches and 140 pounds.

This is the third time in four years that the Aquarium has exhibited a white shark and then returned it to the wild. Our first shark, a female was with us for 198 days; our second, a male, for 137 days. Both were successfully returned to the wild, and the tracking tags they carried documented their journeys back in the ocean.

We've tagged 10 other young sharks in the wild in Southern California waters as part of our white shark field project, and support research to track the migrations of adult white sharks tagged off the Farallon Islands and Point Año Nuevo on California's central coast.

The Aquarium will begin its seventh field season of white shark research this summer, and will again attempt to bring a young shark back to Monterey for exhibit...