Young Great White Shark Arrives at Aquarium

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a toothy new addition today -- a young male great white shark brought to Monterey from Malibu on Wednesday night.

Aquarium officials said the animal is the sixth young great white shark to be exhibited there since 2004 and will hopefully stay at the aquarium for the next several months.

The four-foot, seven-inch, 43-pound shark arrived in Monterey about two weeks after aquarium staff collected him off of the Southern California coast near Marina Del Rey.

Staff members initially transferred the shark to a 4 million-gallon ocean holding pen in Malibu where they observed him feeding and swimming comfortably in the enclosed space.

The young shark was then shuttled to Monterey in a 3,200-gallon mobile life support tank before being placed in the aquarium's recently revamped million-gallon Open Sea exhibit Wednesday night.

Aquarium spokeswoman Karen Jeffries said aquarium staff hope the new addition will help give visitors a better understanding of great white sharks and dispel stereotypes they may have about the species.

"The primary reason we put them on exhibit is to educate people about the animals," she said.

The five young great white sharks that previously inhabited the aquarium's great white exhibit were all successfully returned to the wild, aquarium officials said.

Aquarium visitors got their first glimpse of the new shark Thursday morning, but the public can also watch him online via live HD camera at www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/efc_opensea/open_sea_cam.aspx.

- Bay City News Service