The Conscience of Captivity

PHOTO CREDITMonterey Bay Aquarium/Randy Wilder
MAGNIFICENCE IN MOTION—The Monterey Bay Aquarium placed this young male white shark on exhibit this week. It survived hook and line capture several miles offshore in Santa Monica Bay and spent from Aug. 14-31 in the MBA 4-million-gallon holding pen off Malibu to determine whether it might adapt to captivity as part of the aquarium’s Outer Bay exhibit. The shark is expected to draw the same more than a million people who flocked to see the female shark that survived six months of captivity before her release in March 2005. Some of the proceeds from the record attendance went to shark research.

ANNE SOBLE

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is justifiably proud of the shark study data that has accrued from its field studies of juvenile and adult great white sharks. The growing number of sharks with data-collecting tags is now a meaningful survey sample size. The data being gathered offer new insights into the behavior of great whites, particularly their far-flung travel habits. The potent field data notwithstanding, researchers do differ about the validity of data based on animals in artificial settings, particularly creatures such as the great white who are inveterate travelers. The question is not quite as simple as can a laboratory setting accurately reflect real world conditions? Put it in a human context. Is what one can or cannot learn from isolating humans for field study fairly comparable to forced isolation of what are perceived as less analytical species? Predators, of which humans are at the top of the chain, are part of such a complex natural process that constraints and contrivances always appear to miss the mark. The arbitrariness of the shark capture process seems to pre-limit the scientific validity of ensuing observations, but the seeing is believing component still tends to win out.

One of the stated goals of a captive shark exhibit is to change how people think about sharks. But with a mass media too eager to fall back on traditional stereotyping—this shark is already being called “Baby Jaws” in some reports—and, despite the statistical probability of shark attacks versus dog bites or any other human-animal confrontation, emphasize the danger. This underlying insensitivity is no less evident in some of the inhumane and offensive entertainment related to animals, such as the work of the late, so-called Crocodile Hunter who met a fate that some critics of his work might have deemed singularly appropriate. Although no one wishes a similar fate for any of the great white’s handlers, some hope that this shark will not have to batter his face against the tank walls in frustration as long as his predecessor did. Perhaps he will catch on quickly that if he ignores the pre-planned menus and opts to do what nature intended him to do with his tankmates, he’ll taste freedom sooner than in six months. Tagged and swimming free, he may not sell as many T-shirts and key chains, but the data will help bring us all closer to understanding these magnificent works of natural selection and survival. The sharks, the elephants, the large primates and the big cats who are captured for our entertainment are living, but they are not alive.