The curtain wasn't velvet, and the venue wasn't Broadway, but the effect felt in the anxious audience as it fell away was equally dramatic: At 4:48pm Aquarium staff introduced their fifth juvenile white shark to its temporary 1 million gallon digs at the Outer Bay.
The bubble curtain, which typically only goes up at night, was activated to help give the young predator a better sense for its new invisible boundary. In the 10-15 minutes that it obscured the massive tank, buzz swept through the Aquarium's old cannery catacombs, a crowd filled the viewing gallery to its gills, and a "guest experience" docent relayed a play-by-play.
It's unlikely the 5'3" 80-pound shark heard the applause when the curtain evaporated.
Before the white shark could be transported to Monterey, it had to be evaluated at the Aquarium's holding pen in Malibu, Calif. Naturalists look at three key indicators over several days, according to senior Aquarium spokesman Ken Peterson: how its condition looks after fisherman who accidentally caught it turn it over, how it responds to a 4 million gallon open water net in anticipation of the smaller space that awaits and whether it is feeding consistently.
"In the early phases when aquariums were trying to exhibit white sharks, they would take it [into the pen], later put it in the tank and hope for best," Peterson says. "Then we went out to all white shark experts, and asked, "'If you were going to craft a project like this, what would you need to do to succeed?'"
Their efforts has resulted in four previous white shark visits, which allow their 2002-launched White Shark Project to complete one of two principal aims: ambassadorship, giving people a chance to better appreciate the demonized stars of cinema and surfer stories, and offering scientists a chance to observe it. The other element of the project stays more in Southern California, where sharks deemed too fragile or freaked out by the relocation are tagged and released. Not counting the sharks that have exhibited, 30 sharks have soon swum back out into the waters of the Pacific—generally staying in the SoCal-Baja California coastal area where juvenile-appropriate snacks like smaller sharks skates like to live—providing invaluable and previously unavailable information to marine experts.
Peterson says veterinarian Dr. Mike Murray on hand at the exhibit was cautiously optimistic at the shark's early, encouragingly relaxed tail beat and calm navigation, “which is about as optimistic as veterinarians get.”
The sleek visitor's stay on Cannery Row will likely last until it stops feeding or gets snappy with its fellow tankmembers.
For more on the new arrival, visit www.seanotesblog.org; for more on tagging efforts, visit http://www.topp.org/;  and for more on transporting and feeding the shark, visit the Aquarium's YouTube channels.