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A mates of years ago, the VGP Marine Kingdom, a walk-through nationalist aquarium astatine Injambakkam, Chennai, retrieved a fewer banded bamboo sharks (Chiloscyllium punctatum) from a section fisherman. “They were caught portion fishing, and we got 4 semi-adults, 2 males and 2 females, which we kept successful our show exhibit,“ says S Arockia Cinnakan aka Kannan, the institution’s caput curator.
Last year, these slender, oviparous carpet sharks, autochthonal to the Indo-West Pacific region, which includes the waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Australia, and the Philippines, began breeding. “We ended up with 64-65 eggs and implicit 50 pups,” helium says.
Earlier this month, connected June 6, the aquarium released 25 of these captive-bred banded bamboo sharks into the sea, astatine an lawsuit attended by A Srinath, Minister for Fisheries, Government of Tamil Nadu. “The sharks we released were astir 9 months to 1 twelvemonth old,” helium says, adding that the aquarium continues to clasp immoderate of the younger sharks.
According to him, these bottom-dwelling sharks, which usually devour crustaceans and shrimp successful the wild, were trained to hunt earlier they were released. “We utilized to provender them frozen food. But earlier releasing them, we introduced them to unrecorded food. Thus they learnt hunting behaviour,” helium says.
This initiative, says Kannan, ties into the aquarium's larger purpose. “We person planned a batch of conservation stuff, and this is conscionable the beginning,” helium says, pointing retired that pups were introduced into the water astatine a signifier aboriginal capable for them to get acclimated to it. “If we support them excessively long, they volition get utilized to the captive environment, and it volition beryllium tricky to merchandise it back.”
Like astir different sharks, the top threats these banded bamboo sharks look are from overfishing, arsenic they often extremity up becoming unintentional bycatch. “Fishing trawlers destruct their nests, homes and instrumentality their lives,” says Kannan, who plans to usage the remaining pups to breed much and proceed with this reintroduction programme. “We anticipation to get the numbers higher,” helium says.
While this is the archetypal experimentation of its kind, the aquarium hopes to grow to different marine taxon implicit time, with 1 caveat. “We volition not beryllium readying for immoderate non-native taxon breeding programme. Our absorption is lone connected autochthonal species.”
