South Jersey Residents Will Never See A Great White Shark In The Aquarium
If you're one of those weirdos that loves to watch all the shows featured on the Discovery Channel every year that recap the stories about the craziest shark attacks, you're in good company. I love them, too. Sharks are so fascinating to me, to everyone, probably because they're so mysterious. While there are a lot of basic facts known about them, there are always those few shark stories you'll watch where there's really no explanation as to why a shark randomly attacked at that specific time.
Sharks, man.... they're just cool. Scary, but cool.
No matter how mesmerized you are by what's arguably the ocean's most popular predator to those of us land dwellers, in order to catch a glimpse of one, you'll have to take your chances out on the open water. Don't get your hopes up over seeing on in an aquarium any time soon.
For one, it would cost most aquariums way too much time and money to capture and transport one. Plus, Great Whites aren't known to do well in captivity anyway. They need to swim and be free. Some have even been tracked swimming about 50 miles or more a day. They're so horrible in captivity, in fact, that they'll try to escape by banging their heads on the glass an injuring themselves.
Scientists have determined that it's inhumane to try and conserve sharks via aquariums due to how much they fight captivity. They're almost always injured when researchers try to grab them for research purposes and it's been demonstrated more than once that Great Whites don't heal as well in captivity from those injuries as they do in the open ocean.
So, unfortunately, all of us shark enthusiasts will have to be satisfied with shark documentaries and shows as our way of getting up close and personal with these guys.