The pair died within a day of each other after an earthquake rendered their tank uninhabitable. Photo: Notojima Aquarium
According to reports, two whale sharks in captivity are dead after an earthquake caused their tanks to malfunction.
The whale sharks, which were stuck in a tank at the Notojima Aquarium in Nanao, Japan, died after the Noto earthquake, which measured 7.6 on the Richter scale, shook the Noto Peninsula in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture on January 1.
They died because the earthquake shut down the filtration and heating systems that kept the conditions in their tanks livable. They were a male named Hachibe and a female called Haku. PlanetAttractions.com wrote that “The equipment failures caused the water in the tanks to become cloudy, while the water levels dropped below half.”
Aquarium employees did attempt to fix the issues. They added seawater to the tank, which reached normal levels within a few days, but it wasn’t enough. The water temperature dropped drastically and became so cloudy that the whale sharks weren’t visible anymore.
On January 9, two days since he was last seen in the murky water, Hachibe was found dead. The next day, a diver found Haku, also dead, at the bottom of the tank.
“We are filled with regret,” aquarium representatives said in a statement that stated that the sharks were “a symbol of the aquarium.”
While it’s not clear at the time of this writing whether the aquarium plans to replace the dead whale sharks with new one, the animals’ deaths are yet another reminder that it’s incredibly cruel for us to keep wild animals in small tanks for the sake of our own enjoyment.
