Bournemouth’s blacktip shark

As shark sightings off America’s west coast causes a number of Californian beaches to close, visitors to Bournemouth seafront have also spotted one of the worlds most feared predators.

Thankfully Bournemouth’s shark sightings are not off the southern coastline, but at the award-winning Oceanarium, where a baby blacktip reef shark is making its home in the attraction’s Key West display. Donated to the aquarium by a marine retailer, the Oceanarium’s newest resident, measuring more than 40 cm in length and identified by black tips on its pectoral and dorsal fins, joins a number of different species of sharks and other related rays at the attraction.

Oliver Buttling, Group Curator of the Oceanarium, said: “Visitors to the Oceanarium always show a great interest in the variety of sharks we care for, but many people are quite surprised to discover that with 70 million sharks killed in the wild every year, we pose greater threat to them, than they do to us.

“Once fully grown our baby blacktip reef shark will join his larger counter-parts in our underwater tunnel and hopefully become part of a captive breeding programme. In the meantime, he is settling in to his new home in the Key West display, which he shares with distant relatives including zebra sharks and guitar fish.”

For more information call 01202 311993.