Q&A with Dr. Erin Meyer on ReSharking the ocean
Seattle Aquarium plays large role in the foundational processes of ReShark as they wait to breed their own Indo-Pacific leopard shark eggs.
By Leah Downing | Nov. 6, 2024
Ocean conservationists launching a global project to halt declining numbers of shark and ray species in oceans across the planet are focusing their earliest efforts on the Indo-Pacific leopard shark, citing an ideal combination of biological and circumstantial factors.
This particular leopard shark checks a lot of boxes, according to Dr. Erin Meyer, chief conservation officer at the Seattle Aquarium and leading member of the ReShark steering committee.
“It’s been in human care for decades, which means we know how to breed them,” said Meyer. “We know what their needs are throughout their entire life cycle, and they lay eggs, So all of those things coming together said, Yeah, this is the right species for this novel experiment.”
ReShark is an international coalition. Its Stegostoma tigrinum Augmentation and Recovery (StAR) project transports aquarium-bred shark eggs to Raja Ampat, Indonesia, where the sharks are raised in hatcheries and then released into the wild.
The Seattle Aquarium is a founding member of ReShark and serves as an education and transportation hub for the initiative while working on hatching its own shark eggs.
I interviewed Meyer recently over Zoom to discuss the project. She explained how the ReShark project came to life, the ins and outs of Indo-Pacific leopard shark care, and the aquarium’s continued role in conservation work. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Downing: First of all, tell me more about Indo-Pacific leopard sharks and what makes them so special?
Meyer: I first started having conversations with Mark Erdmann with Conservation International back in 2018 about this general concept of, you know, could we breed sharks in aquariums to recover endangered species, and what could that look like? Is it possible?
The Indo-Pacific leopard shark was the first species that came forward, in part because that species has been in human care for decades, which means we know how to breed them. We know what their needs are throughout their entire life cycle. It’s a species in the wild as well, so we know a bit about their movements, about their color patterns, a little bit about—a lot actually—about their population genetics. Also, they lay eggs. Shipping eggs, as opposed to shipping pups, felt like also a good place to start. So all of those things coming together said, Yeah, this is the right species for this novel experiment.
One of the things that I think about as a career conservationist is that sharks and rays are among the most misunderstood animals on the planet, right? There’s a constant barrage of media that incites fear around sharks and rays. In general, when the public thinks of a shark, they think of a sharky shark, right? You think of a Great White shark, and that that’s what sharks look like—when, in reality, most sharks don’t look like that. There’s a lot of body variation and not all sharks are voracious predators hunting mammals or even big fish.
So when thinking about launching this work, part of the opportunity we have is to help change how the public thinks about sharks and rays. So our first species doesn’t look like a sharky shark, doesn’t have big teeth, it doesn’t hunt fish, so that helps us start down that path, hopefully, of changing public perceptions of sharks and rays.
They’re like little puppies. They’re adorable and super chill.
I saw one leopard shark in the new Ocean Pavilion. How many sharks are in your care and which ones are part of this program?
So first with the Indo-Pacific leopard shark that you saw in The Reef—he is a little over two years old. He was born at the Shark Reef Aquarium in Las Vegas. We do have a second Indo-Pacific leopard shark in our care. She came to us as an egg from the Georgia Aquarium, and so she hatched in May. So she’s a little too small to go out on exhibit right now. She will eventually join the other Indo-Pacific leopard shark in The Reef. And we’re looking to acquire another female from another aquarium, so we will have three in our care eventually, and when they’re mature—around seven, eight, nine years old—then they will also be breeding to produce eggs to be a part of the StAR project and research.
How do you go about caring for your sharks through breeding and eventually shipping the eggs to Indonesia?
Like with our mammals that we have in our care, sharks and rays are very complex and very intelligent animals, so our staff are actually very specifically trained on how to care for each of those individual species. Each of those species are provided individualized care and individualized diets. Not just what they eat for that species, but the proportions of the different foods are individualized to the individual animal. They're also target trained. So they're trained to come to a particular color and shape of a target that the animal care staff member will hold in the water, and then they feed the animal that way. So there's a lot of specialized care, and these animals that are now in The Reef have been going through that training for the last two years.
They're also trained to participate in their own care. They get trained to be comfortable with and swim to a stretcher, so if our veterinary team needs to take a look or do an ultrasound, they're trained to come to that on their own.
For the Indo-Pacific leopard shark in particular, the two that we have in our care will mature somewhere around seven to nine years old, then they'll be old enough to breed on their own. So up until then, they'll continue to get daily care by our veterinary team and animal care team. They assess their health and well being on a daily basis.
Health is looking at, you know, are they growing? Are they staying on track on their growth rates? Kind of in the same way that we do for children. They look for visual cues that there are any diseases or injuries or anything like that. We also, believe it or not, are essentially assessing whether or not they're happy, and that's something that we do for all of the animals in our care, not just the sharks and rays. We do that for our anemones and our sea urchins and our sea cucumbers. We do that for all of the animals.
It sounds like you're kind of in the beginnings of the breeding process for these sharks. Have you had any egg shipments come from the Seattle Aquarium yet?
Not from eggs that are produced at the Seattle Aquarium, because we have two juvenile sharks. ReShark is a global coalition of over 100 partners across over 16 countries. Now there are about 50 aquariums and zoos with aquariums around the world that are a part of that coalition. So far from the United States, there are two aquariums that have provided eggs as a part of ReShark. Shark Reef aquarium at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta are the two aquariums in the US that have provided eggs. We also have had eggs provided by the SEA LIFE Aquarium in Sydney, Australia. Those are the three aquariums so far that have provided eggs for this program.
Eggs coming from North America come through the Seattle Aquarium. We serve as the North American hub, so eggs from Georgia and from Las Vegas get shipped to Seattle. We house those eggs at our Animal Care Center in South Seattle, and then we package them up and send them to Indonesia, where eventually they find their way to our hatcheries in Raja Ampat.
How successful have these egg shipments been, in terms of successfully transporting and putting these sharks in the ocean?
This year's releases started in September. They're rolling into either next week or the week after, and it'll be roughly 20 animals we will have released this fall.
We did our first test shipments in the summer of 2022 with a smaller number of eggs, just to make sure all the processes were going to move forward. That first round, we had three eggs hatched in our nurseries that fall, and we released our first pups in January of 2023. So that was our test. It worked, now we can move forward and scale up.
We did our first larger shipment in December of last year, and then a series of other smaller shipments over the course of this year, moving toward roughly 20 animals that we're releasing over the course of this fall. We just shipped around 20 eggs from Seattle, from both facilities, Georgia and Shark Reef, to Indonesia at the end of September. We have another far smaller shipment of three eggs coming to Seattle in a couple days that we’ll then hold on to for a little while in case additional eggs are produced here in the US, but those will make their way to Indonesia in the middle of November. And there are a few more eggs coming out of two different facilities. Sea World Gold Coast facility in Gold Coast Australia is starting to produce eggs as well, and they've been approved as a breeder. So those two and the SEA LIFE Sydney facility are also producing eggs right now, so we are expecting a shipment coming out of Australia into Indonesia as well later this year.
Learn more about ReShark here.
Seattle Aquarium plays large role in the foundational processes of ReShark as they wait to breed their own Indo-Pacific leopard shark eggs.
By Leah Downing | Nov. 6, 2024
Ocean conservationists launching a global project to halt declining numbers of shark and ray species in oceans across the planet are focusing their earliest efforts on the Indo-Pacific leopard shark, citing an ideal combination of biological and circumstantial factors.
This particular leopard shark checks a lot of boxes, according to Dr. Erin Meyer, chief conservation officer at the Seattle Aquarium and leading member of the ReShark steering committee.
“It’s been in human care for decades, which means we know how to breed them,” said Meyer. “We know what their needs are throughout their entire life cycle, and they lay eggs, So all of those things coming together said, Yeah, this is the right species for this novel experiment.”
ReShark is an international coalition. Its Stegostoma tigrinum Augmentation and Recovery (StAR) project transports aquarium-bred shark eggs to Raja Ampat, Indonesia, where the sharks are raised in hatcheries and then released into the wild.
The Seattle Aquarium is a founding member of ReShark and serves as an education and transportation hub for the initiative while working on hatching its own shark eggs.
I interviewed Meyer recently over Zoom to discuss the project. She explained how the ReShark project came to life, the ins and outs of Indo-Pacific leopard shark care, and the aquarium’s continued role in conservation work. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Downing: First of all, tell me more about Indo-Pacific leopard sharks and what makes them so special?
Meyer: I first started having conversations with Mark Erdmann with Conservation International back in 2018 about this general concept of, you know, could we breed sharks in aquariums to recover endangered species, and what could that look like? Is it possible?
The Indo-Pacific leopard shark was the first species that came forward, in part because that species has been in human care for decades, which means we know how to breed them. We know what their needs are throughout their entire life cycle. It’s a species in the wild as well, so we know a bit about their movements, about their color patterns, a little bit about—a lot actually—about their population genetics. Also, they lay eggs. Shipping eggs, as opposed to shipping pups, felt like also a good place to start. So all of those things coming together said, Yeah, this is the right species for this novel experiment.
One of the things that I think about as a career conservationist is that sharks and rays are among the most misunderstood animals on the planet, right? There’s a constant barrage of media that incites fear around sharks and rays. In general, when the public thinks of a shark, they think of a sharky shark, right? You think of a Great White shark, and that that’s what sharks look like—when, in reality, most sharks don’t look like that. There’s a lot of body variation and not all sharks are voracious predators hunting mammals or even big fish.
So when thinking about launching this work, part of the opportunity we have is to help change how the public thinks about sharks and rays. So our first species doesn’t look like a sharky shark, doesn’t have big teeth, it doesn’t hunt fish, so that helps us start down that path, hopefully, of changing public perceptions of sharks and rays.
They’re like little puppies. They’re adorable and super chill.
I saw one leopard shark in the new Ocean Pavilion. How many sharks are in your care and which ones are part of this program?
So first with the Indo-Pacific leopard shark that you saw in The Reef—he is a little over two years old. He was born at the Shark Reef Aquarium in Las Vegas. We do have a second Indo-Pacific leopard shark in our care. She came to us as an egg from the Georgia Aquarium, and so she hatched in May. So she’s a little too small to go out on exhibit right now. She will eventually join the other Indo-Pacific leopard shark in The Reef. And we’re looking to acquire another female from another aquarium, so we will have three in our care eventually, and when they’re mature—around seven, eight, nine years old—then they will also be breeding to produce eggs to be a part of the StAR project and research.
How do you go about caring for your sharks through breeding and eventually shipping the eggs to Indonesia?
Like with our mammals that we have in our care, sharks and rays are very complex and very intelligent animals, so our staff are actually very specifically trained on how to care for each of those individual species. Each of those species are provided individualized care and individualized diets. Not just what they eat for that species, but the proportions of the different foods are individualized to the individual animal. They're also target trained. So they're trained to come to a particular color and shape of a target that the animal care staff member will hold in the water, and then they feed the animal that way. So there's a lot of specialized care, and these animals that are now in The Reef have been going through that training for the last two years.
They're also trained to participate in their own care. They get trained to be comfortable with and swim to a stretcher, so if our veterinary team needs to take a look or do an ultrasound, they're trained to come to that on their own.
For the Indo-Pacific leopard shark in particular, the two that we have in our care will mature somewhere around seven to nine years old, then they'll be old enough to breed on their own. So up until then, they'll continue to get daily care by our veterinary team and animal care team. They assess their health and well being on a daily basis.
Health is looking at, you know, are they growing? Are they staying on track on their growth rates? Kind of in the same way that we do for children. They look for visual cues that there are any diseases or injuries or anything like that. We also, believe it or not, are essentially assessing whether or not they're happy, and that's something that we do for all of the animals in our care, not just the sharks and rays. We do that for our anemones and our sea urchins and our sea cucumbers. We do that for all of the animals.
It sounds like you're kind of in the beginnings of the breeding process for these sharks. Have you had any egg shipments come from the Seattle Aquarium yet?
Not from eggs that are produced at the Seattle Aquarium, because we have two juvenile sharks. ReShark is a global coalition of over 100 partners across over 16 countries. Now there are about 50 aquariums and zoos with aquariums around the world that are a part of that coalition. So far from the United States, there are two aquariums that have provided eggs as a part of ReShark. Shark Reef aquarium at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta are the two aquariums in the US that have provided eggs. We also have had eggs provided by the SEA LIFE Aquarium in Sydney, Australia. Those are the three aquariums so far that have provided eggs for this program.
Eggs coming from North America come through the Seattle Aquarium. We serve as the North American hub, so eggs from Georgia and from Las Vegas get shipped to Seattle. We house those eggs at our Animal Care Center in South Seattle, and then we package them up and send them to Indonesia, where eventually they find their way to our hatcheries in Raja Ampat.
How successful have these egg shipments been, in terms of successfully transporting and putting these sharks in the ocean?
This year's releases started in September. They're rolling into either next week or the week after, and it'll be roughly 20 animals we will have released this fall.
We did our first test shipments in the summer of 2022 with a smaller number of eggs, just to make sure all the processes were going to move forward. That first round, we had three eggs hatched in our nurseries that fall, and we released our first pups in January of 2023. So that was our test. It worked, now we can move forward and scale up.
We did our first larger shipment in December of last year, and then a series of other smaller shipments over the course of this year, moving toward roughly 20 animals that we're releasing over the course of this fall. We just shipped around 20 eggs from Seattle, from both facilities, Georgia and Shark Reef, to Indonesia at the end of September. We have another far smaller shipment of three eggs coming to Seattle in a couple days that we’ll then hold on to for a little while in case additional eggs are produced here in the US, but those will make their way to Indonesia in the middle of November. And there are a few more eggs coming out of two different facilities. Sea World Gold Coast facility in Gold Coast Australia is starting to produce eggs as well, and they've been approved as a breeder. So those two and the SEA LIFE Sydney facility are also producing eggs right now, so we are expecting a shipment coming out of Australia into Indonesia as well later this year.
Learn more about ReShark here.
