So the project of the day was extracting two 4 foot nurse sharks (little guys) from one exhibit and moving them to the main 600,000 gallon shark display. A weeks worth of planning and talking laid out several options for this project. When push comes to shove, I like the rodeo method. Grab the sharks, restrain them, pull them to the top without them hurting themselves (or the aquarist staff), pulling them out on a stretcher, placing them in a transport bin, hauling them to the next exhibit, and releasing them. It's just like moving fish from one home tank to another.....right?
We planned to corral them a bit and use several people to help contain them. 1st shark punched straight through the first net, leaving a nice size hole. Second try at the first shark, I decided to just go for it with my arms (just a big bear hug). Not too much to tell besides a big fight until we figured out who was stronger: me or the shark. Second shark wiggled out of my grasp just enough to be able to use his head to beat the living day lights out of my face/neck/shoulder on the way up to the surface. I didn't realize how close I was to a major "oops" until I got out of the water later on. I had several people ask if I was ok.... I had no clue why until someone pointed out my bleeding neck. The only point it broke the skin was right at my jugular.
Anyway, this is a picture forum, so let's get to the pictures.... Enjoy.
Forklift to get them down from the top of the exhibit:
Behind us, you can see the transport container:
In the water tracking them down. The exhibit we pulled them from is 250,000 gallons.
That's my head poking out of the water as I'm bringing the first shark up to the platform.
Passed into the stretcher and carried to the transport bin.
Moved acrossed the park to their new home.
You can see a glimpse of the hit to my neck in this picture as we're pulling them to move into the larger display:
We planned to corral them a bit and use several people to help contain them. 1st shark punched straight through the first net, leaving a nice size hole. Second try at the first shark, I decided to just go for it with my arms (just a big bear hug). Not too much to tell besides a big fight until we figured out who was stronger: me or the shark. Second shark wiggled out of my grasp just enough to be able to use his head to beat the living day lights out of my face/neck/shoulder on the way up to the surface. I didn't realize how close I was to a major "oops" until I got out of the water later on. I had several people ask if I was ok.... I had no clue why until someone pointed out my bleeding neck. The only point it broke the skin was right at my jugular.
Anyway, this is a picture forum, so let's get to the pictures.... Enjoy.
Forklift to get them down from the top of the exhibit:
Behind us, you can see the transport container:
In the water tracking them down. The exhibit we pulled them from is 250,000 gallons.
That's my head poking out of the water as I'm bringing the first shark up to the platform.
Passed into the stretcher and carried to the transport bin.
Moved acrossed the park to their new home.
You can see a glimpse of the hit to my neck in this picture as we're pulling them to move into the larger display:
