“The Shark: Man’s friend?
“The Shark: Man’s friend?” is the name of the event to be held for the first time in the Primorsky Aquarium. It will take place from 12:00 to 15:00, on 14 July.
“We’ve decided to hold the Shark tour before the swimming season reaches its height”, says Olga Shevchenko, the Chief of the Research Support Office of the Primorsky Aquarium. “We’ll explain to our visitors what kind of creature the shark is, why people shouldn’t be afraid of it and how to behave when meeting with the predator in the wild. The visitors are to find out if the shark is man’s friend or enemy”.
Since the tour program includes a lot of interesting things for children, we would advise you to bring your kids to the Aquarium and follow the entertaining route with them. On the route there are 5 stations at which the Aquarium specialists and volunteers will be waiting for the visitors. At the beginning of the tour all the participants will get route cards containing information about each station and tasks for children.
The tour is to begin in the Evolution of the Ocean Life Exhibit where tanks with “heroes of the day”, zebra sharks, are situated (the First Station). The Second Station will be in the Devonian period. Then the visitors will proceed to the Kelp forest tank where dogfish sharks reside (the Third Station). After that the route will pass through the Sea of Japan/the East Sea Exhibit (The Fourth Station). The Fifth Station will be located at the tropical underwater tunnel with the largest concentration of sharks in the Aquarium. At each station the visitors will get to know about the most ancient dwellers of the World Ocean, learn some newly discovered facts about sharks and listen to myths and legends about them.
The youngest visitors will do the tasks from the route cards and earn a shark tooth for each successful attempt. No sharks will be harmed: the “teeth” are made of plastic filaments. By the way, sharks often replace their teeth, and the Aquarium ones do the same.
At the end of the tour its participants can take selfies against the tank with sharks and put the photos on social media with the hashtag #shark_ day_2018 : friend or enemy.
Biologists know that sharks’ vicious reputation as bloodthirsty man-eaters is undeserved. Today humans pose the main threat to sharks: due to their overfishing some species of these marine predators are on the brink of extinction. And we hope that after making the Shark tour in our Aquarium you will realize that sharks are our friends, not enemies.