|  SeaQuarium Rhyl are so excited about their new arrivals, staff are now feeding baby sharks by hand after the choosy fish refused to dine any other way. The three bamboo sharks will only consume their full daily ration of tiny shrimps if they can eat by hand.
Fortunately for their handlers, the baby sharks - which measure between 4 inches to 6 inches - do not pose any threat, but the males could reach up to 1.2 metres when fully grown! Aquarist Christy Williams said: 'We started hand-feeding our new arrivals when we noticed them showing no interest in the food, until I daggled the food into the water I tried it only once to make sure they got enough by hand, and now all of the baby sharks want their meals hand-delivered. Christy added 'It sounds like a hazardous job, as sometime they could give a little bit of a nip but they're quite gentle, we hadn't anticipated the rearing of these babies being quite so labour-intensive, but we're confident once they move onto chopped sand eel and sprat we'll soon get them feeding for themselves.' The three baby sharks are the offspring of another resident at the aquarium, and more egg cases are yet to hatch at SeaQuarium. All the baby sharks are on show alongside their mum, and visitors can see this technique every day when the staff are feeding the babies. Brownbanded Bamboo Sharks, Latin names Chiloscyllium punctatum, can survive up to 12 hours out of water and they are a tropical species found in the Indo-West pacific, and feed on bottom dwelling invertebrates and small fish. SeaQuarium Manager Colette Macdonald is asking children to help name the new babies, she said “the little sharks are too young to identify as a male or female, so it would be best to come up with a name that fits either way”. The winning name will be picked out and the winner will adopt the baby for 12 months and win a VIP trip to SeaQuarium Rhyl, Competition entries to be sent to SeaQuarium, East Parade, Rhyl, Denbighshire. LL18 3AF or email [email protected] The winning name will be picked on 30th July 2011 |
