Shark training
At SEA LIFE Blackpool we provide a home for Europe’s largest collection of tropical sharks. It offers us a unique opportunity to carry out shark training, which we do with our largest sharks every other day. The training enables us to get close enough to the sharks to treat them if they get ill and gives us an insight into the intelligence and learning ability of these graceful creaturescolours and shapes each species sees in the wild. It also allows us to get to know each shark personally – something that can be very useful in an aquarium environment.
Shark training also makes monitoring feeding more effective. We have to give all our sharks vitamins every week, so target feeding makes it easy to make sure that the correct shark has the correct vitamins. During shark training, we feed each shark and train them to respond to a sign of a particular colour and shape. This way each species should come up in turn.
The SEA LIFE Blackpool aquarium Ocean Tank houses Sandbar Sharks, Tawny Nurse Sharks, Black Tip Reef Sharks, White Tip Reef Sharks and a Bowmouth Guitar Shark with over 10 other shark species in other areas. All of them are fascinating creatures and all face daily threats to their existence in the wild.
The things they share are the risk to their populations from over fishing and indiscriminate killing. But did you know that some shark’s fins are prized in Asian cuisine, that finning accounts for most sharks that are caught commercially or that some species are being targeted illegally for sale?
The SEA LIFE shark tagging project has been launched to draw awareness to the plight of the shark in the wild and discover key learnings to protect their future.
To get involved, help fund our conservations shark tagging project or enquire about helping us at SEA LIFE Blackpool, please email: slcblackpool@merlinentertainments.biz