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Ocean Watch
By Susan Scott
Monday, July 31, 2000
DURING a visit to Hong Kong two weeks ago, I discovered a tunnel-shaped aquarium. Tunnel shape adds
scope to aquariumThe first time I saw one of these was in Auckland in 1991, and since then they've been popping up throughout the world. I've seen them in Sydney, Orlando and Maui, and I'm told both Guam and the Bahamas (and several other places) have them also.
This aquarium design is popular because it's fun.
Visitors ride on a conveyor belt through a tube surrounded by water and whatever marine inhabitants the facility hosts.
In the case of the Hong Kong aquarium, this was a compelling collection of sharks and rays.
The ride through this exhibit is remarkable because sharks of nearly every shape and size surround you. Sharks rest on the bottom, swim up and down the sides and glide back and forth overhead. A person hardly knows where to look first.
During my first ride through, I turned around and around trying -- and failing -- to get a good look at a particularly interesting shark.
Since you can ride through the aquarium multiple times on one admission charge at this facility, I decided to go again and take some pictures.I clicked and snapped all the way through, sometimes walking backward on the belt to get better shots. At the end, however, I experienced every photographer's nightmare: no film in the camera. This, however, wasn't so bad. I simply loaded my film and rode through this shark city a third time. Other visitors stared, surely wondering why this American woman was so crazy about sharks.
ONE reason was that this tank held a species new to me. This fish was unmistakable. It was about 6 feet long and had a long, blade-like snout armed on both sides with large teeth. It looked like the shark was carrying a saw in front of its face.
Only two kinds of fish carry such weapons: One is a saw shark and the other is a sawfish, which is actually a ray. These two species closely resemble one another.
Sawfish bear live young, which sounds awfully hard on the female. But like the spines of unborn stingrays, saw teeth are flexible until after birth. Thus, baby sawfish are born without hurting their mother.
Sawfish are common in tropical salt waters throughout the world and readily migrate up rivers into fresh water.
Lake Nicaragua, for example, has a large population of sawfish.
A sawfish's saw is a handy tool. The creature uses it to dig up shelled animals on sandy bottoms and also to club prey. The sawfish swims fast through schools of fish flailing its saw back and forth, wounding and impaling victims.
It then cruises back to eat at its leisure.
You won't see any saw sharks or sawfish in Hawaii's subtropical waters, but if we get the new aquarium we so greatly need, perhaps one day we'll see these interesting fish on Oahu.
Marine science writer Susan Scott's Ocean Watch column
appears Mondays in the Star-Bulletin. Contact her at honu@aloha.net.
