Why No Aquarium Has A Great White Shark

They are some of the scariest water predators and after the movie Jaws, people have been having nightmares about these beings. Many people avoid the ocean altogether because of the great white shark. Have you noticed that aquariums do not house any great whites? Have you ever wondered why this is so? Well, as you might imagine, keeping these water predators in captivity proves an extremely difficult task. There are aquariums in the world that can even keep a whale shark, which is the biggest fish in the sea. But great whites are a different story. It’s not like people haven’t tried. In fact, they’ve been trying since the 70s. Most of the tries ended up killing the sharks.

By the beginning of the new millennium only the Monterrey Bay Aquarium didn’t give up on trying to put a great white shark on display and they succeeded in being the first aquarium to house this type of shark longer than 16 days. They did it for 6 months and then released it into the ocean again. This was very expensive, so they kind of gave up in 2011. This video explains why it is difficult and expensive to keep a great white in captivity.

Advertisement