Touch Tank Thursday's! Week 1: Swell shark, Horn shark

By Sydney

Here to introduce our first Touch Tank Tuesday are our sharks! Residents of our

elasmobranch touch tank, they are completely harmless to any of our guests that dare to touch these top predators! We recently had some changes to our touch tank shark population, releasing our four horn sharks back into the wild, and babysitting six swell sharks for the winter!

Horn sharks are found mostly along Southern California, with some warm water influxes bringing them as far north as San Francisco. They hunt primarily at night, using their sense of smell to find prey in the rocky reefs or sandy flats. If prey is buried or stuck, horn sharks are able to slightly extend their jaw to use like as a chisel to pull things from crevices or rocks! They are most identifiable by the two horns on their dorsal fins, made out of keratin, they’ve evenbeen seen to turn different colors pending on the food the sharks eat!

We’ve also been babysitting some baby swell sharks! These sharks are named after their unique defense mechanism! When they feel threatened, these sharks will bend their body into a U shape, hold their tail in their mouth and suck in water. This makes them bigger and harder for predators to pull from the rocky crevices they like to hide in! Swell sharks are also biofluorescent, meaning they are able to use the sun’s energy to glow a green color under certain types of light!

When visiting our touch tanks, it’s important to make sure you’re following the proper

guidelines to make sure everything in the tank stays safe and healthy! All of our sharks should only be touched very gently along their backs in the direction of head to tail. Why? Sharks are covered in scale-like dermal denticles layered on top of each other. When touched in the opposite direction, it can cause irritation and disturbance for our sharks, so we want to make sure they are comfortable and only touch from front to back!