Stefanie Brendl Talks to BBC Newsday
Scroll to 19:10 to hear our Executive Director answer questions about the #SharkFreeVaccines announcement on BBC Newsday! One question we have been getting is if we can breed sharks for the demand of a COVID-19 vaccine. While it is not a bad thought, shark farming is not possible. Here’s why:
Sharks do poorly in captivity. Most species take nearly a decade to grow to maturity and then they only reproduce every 1-2 years with a handful of pups.
Most shark species are predators that eat fish only. You would have to catch fish to feed them. Do that for a decade and it becomes prohibitively expensive.
The majority of sharks need to swim to breathe, they cannot stop and pump water over their gills like other fish do. Thus, sharks need vast enclosures. They also rarely reproduce when they are in captivity, so we would have to rely on artificial insemination.
The sharks with the biggest livers are deep water sharks that mature even slower than the megafauna we typically think of. Some have to be 30-40 years old before they reproduce.
Farmed fish usually are the type of fish that are super hardy, can handle being jammed up in tanks, will eat some cheap fish food and produce thousands of eggs within a short period of time.
Essentially what we are saying, is that to raise a shark is about as hard as raising a human, time and energy-wise. Think of it like trying to raise lions or panda bears in captivity. It just doesn't work. If it worked, it would be great, because we could grow sharks for meat, fins and all the other products people want to have. We think it is much smarter to use plants, bacterias, algae, or even synthetic processes to grow something you can reproduce over and over again, with ample of quality control.