An aquarium that only displays sharks and rays.

After coming up with a pun that will be put towards the end of this post, I have been forumulating an idea (that will never happen, but I think it's fun and interesting) for an aquarium that only displays cartilaginous fish. I have no idea where it would be located, so you can use your imagination for that. Anyway, let's begin.

The entrance before the main aquarium area contains a smallish museum area with shark and ray-related displays. There's a typical megalodon replica jaw display, some real teeth, and some series of teeth representing evolutionary transitions such as Otodus to megalodon and Isurus to Carcharodon. There's also some more primitive shark fossils, including a rostrum of Onchopristis, and more recent specimens such as wet specimens and models of highly endangered sharks such as the Pondicherry and Ganges river sharks and conservation issues such as shark finning and overfishing, as well as things like cownose ray bowfishing tournaments. All of this fits in a relatively small building that leads to the main aquarium.

The actual aquarium area only displays relatively small sharks and rays which do relatively well in captivity. Bonnethead sharks (Sphyrna tiburo) and cownose rays (Rhinoptera bonasus) are in display, and there's a touch tank displaying some of the total population of these species. There is also a tank with South American freshwater stingrays of various species, and as an insurance population, a large tank with smalleye hammerheads (Sphyrna tudes), which is threatened by overfishing. Scalloped bonnetheads (Sphyrna corona), scoopheads (Sphyrna media) and endangered wingheads (Eusphyrna blochii), which would hopefully breed. The only non-hammerhead sharks would be epaulette sharks (Hemiscyllum ocellatum) and whitespotted bamboo sharks (Chiloscyllium plagiosum).

And (get ready for this one), there's a pub at the other end of the facility, which serves the usual fried pub meals and Dogfish Head brewery drinks. In this aquarium where most of the species displayed are hammerhead sharks, the only appropriate slogan of the pub at the other end is "Get hammered!". There's the pun. There's also a gift shop which sells the usual T-shirts, books and fossil shark teeth, but it's not really that notable.

 

Would be nice to have some the deep sea sharks like Mandarin dogfish. That turn up in Japanese aquaria and occasionally others.

Why no sawfish?