Monday, July 31, 2000
Tunnel shape adds
scope to aquarium
DURING a visit to Hong Kong two weeks ago, I
discovered a tunnel-shaped aquarium.
The first time I saw one of these was in Auckland in
1991, and since then they've been popping up throughout the world. I've
seen them in Sydney, Orlando and Maui, and I'm told both Guam and the
Bahamas (and several other places) have them also.
This aquarium design is popular because it's fun.
Visitors ride on a conveyor belt through a tube
surrounded by water and whatever marine inhabitants the facility hosts.
In the case of the Hong Kong aquarium, this was a
compelling collection of sharks and rays.
The ride through this exhibit is remarkable because
sharks of nearly every shape and size surround you. Sharks rest on the
bottom, swim up and down the sides and glide back and forth overhead. A
person hardly knows where to look first.
During my first ride through, I turned around and
around trying -- and failing -- to get a good look at a particularly
interesting shark.
Since you can ride through the aquarium multiple
times on one admission charge at this facility, I decided to go again
and take some pictures.
I clicked and snapped all the way through, sometimes
walking backward on the belt to get better shots. At the end, however, I
experienced every photographer's nightmare: no film in the camera. This,
however, wasn't so bad. I simply loaded my film and rode through this
shark city a third time. Other visitors stared, surely wondering why
this American woman was so crazy about sharks.
ONE reason was that this tank held a species new to
me. This fish was unmistakable. It was about 6 feet long and had a long,
blade-like snout armed on both sides with large teeth. It looked like
the shark was carrying a saw in front of its face.
Only two kinds of fish carry such weapons: One is a
saw shark and the other is a sawfish, which is actually a ray. These two
species closely resemble one another.
Sawfish bear live young, which sounds awfully hard on
the female. But like the spines of unborn stingrays, saw teeth are
flexible until after birth. Thus, baby sawfish are born without hurting
their mother.
Sawfish are common in tropical salt waters throughout
the world and readily migrate up rivers into fresh water.
Lake Nicaragua, for example, has a large population
of sawfish.
A sawfish's saw is a handy tool. The creature uses it
to dig up shelled animals on sandy bottoms and also to club prey. The
sawfish swims fast through schools of fish flailing its saw back and
forth, wounding and impaling victims.
It then cruises back to eat at its leisure.
You won't see any saw sharks or sawfish in Hawaii's
subtropical waters, but if we get the new aquarium we so greatly need,
perhaps one day we'll see these interesting fish on Oahu.
