When you visit the Tropical Reef Aquarium, you’ll likely notice the massive nurse sharks hanging out on the bottom of the Outer Reef habitat. They generally don’t seem to be in a hurry — unless it’s mealtime, of course.
Feeding the variety of sharks at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium isn’t as simple as tossing some fish into the massive Outer Reef habitat and letting every shark fend for itself. If the aquarists did that, the nurse sharks might end up with the lion’s share of the food.
The sharks receive “target training” to ensure they get all the food, vitamins, and medication they individually require, and our Zoo veterinaries and aquarists can provide the highest level of care for them. The effort is coordinated and fascinating, involving patience and training (for both the people and the sharks).
“It is so much easier if we can open the door of the care area, put a target in front of it, and have a shark swim into it,” said staff aquarist Cindy, a 27-year Point Defiance Zoo veteran who works with the sharks and other aquarium animals. “It’s better than having divers try to catch them or entice them with food.”
At the top of the Outer Reef habitat, meal preparation is underway. Three “sous chefs” are busy chopping up high-quality, sustainable mackerel, herring, and salmon (yes, even these warm water tropical sharks have a taste for the finer Northwest cuisine). They eat everything — bones, tails, heads, and all. They don’t waste their restaurant-quality food.
Each group of sharks has a specific menu for the day based on their age, size, dietary needs, and tastes. The food preparers even know how the sharks like their bites proportioned — seriously. The gray reef sharks get smaller bites because they are still juveniles. The nurse sharks like big hunks of fish.
When it is time to eat, six or seven people gather around the edge of the habitat, donning rubber gloves and buckets, and they all grab a pole. They each have an assigned area in the habitat where the individual sharks have been trained to eat. The sharks know that it’s mealtime when the poles hit the water in their assigned area or station.
The sharks are smart and have learned many cues that help keep mealtimes as organized as an elementary school lunchroom with assigned seats, and attentive adults keeping routines in check.
Before the poles even hit the water, the sharks understand the clues, like when the aquarium lights slowly get brighter to mimic the sunrise. And the smell of fish brings them all to the top of the habitat, fins circling about in anticipation.
Butter, a zebra shark, is very gentle and eats in a mannerly way, easily grabbing food from the five-foot tongs. Zebra shark Honey gets very excited when she sees food, and often knocks it off the tongs. “We always tell her, ‘You’re OK,” said Cindy. “You’re getting the same amount of food as everyone else. So, we’ve learned not to make her wait.’”
The nurse sharks all meet on the far side of the aquarium. Suddenly the usually slow-moving sharks are on a mission to get their food, and they open their mouths and suck it in like vacuums.
“The nurse sharks are ultimate couch potatoes except when food is involved, and they are stealthy and seem to come out of nowhere,” said Zoo volunteer Bruce. “Nurse sharks don’t bite their food so much as suck it in. They don’t even have to wrap their mouths around the food. They can be a couple of inches away.”
Bruce likes to cut up a few extra fish heads to ensure all the nurse sharks get their fill.
“We laugh because we do a lot of training. However, I am firmly convinced that we are trained by them,” said Cindy.