Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 | 6:05 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
January 22 - 23, 2005
One day last week, Shauna Cotrell filleted a large, restaurant-quality barracuda. She held the fish by its tail, sliced a knife through the fish's belly and worked the blade along its spine.
Like the finest sushi chefs in the world, she methodically cut the barracuda into bite-size pieces and set them aside for her customers: the 2,000-plus fish and reptiles at Mandalay Bay's Shark Reef.
Each week, Cotrell prepares hundreds of individual meals for the sharks, piranhas, fresh-water rays and golden crocodiles that are on display at Shark Reef. She knows how many herrings the exhibit's eight sandbar sharks will eat during one feeding -- 50 -- and has learned which fish are finicky or need smaller portions.
Her knowledge, esoteric as it is, has led to some interesting findings.
She knows, for example, that the piranhas at Shark Reef require goldfish or pieces of chicken threaded or tied on thin string that are lowered into the tank, where the ravenous Amazonian fish attack the offering in a feeding frenzy.
Cotrell has also learned that the aquarium's eels are sometimes fussy about their meals of herring and barracuda, and require smaller portions.
"I like it," said Cotrell, 26, who earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in fisheries science from Oregon State University.
Shark Reef employs only one person to prepare all meals for the animals, and Cotrell fell into the job almost by accident in August when she was hired.
She had already accepted a position as a volunteer in the Peace Corps, and even though the Shark Reef administration was aware she would be leaving at the end of March for a posting in the Philippines as a coastal resources manager, they hired her.
"They offered me the job, and I already wanted to work in an aquarium," Cotrell said, who added she had never worked in an aquarium before.
The previous "dietary aquarist" who prepared food for the animals at Shark Reef was employed for one year.
The entire aquarium employs about 65 people in various positions.
The job, while considered an entry-level position, is not without its challenges. One of those is organizing the daily menu for the fish, which looks like a menu found in an elementary school cafeteria but contains the type of food only a 4-foot nurse shark would find appetizing.
The general curator compiles the menu for the animals after consulting with other curators and veterinarians, said Brian Robison, director of Shark Reef.
The menu for an average weekday for the eight tiger sharks, which are fed three times a week, includes 20 pounds of mackerel, squid or herring, depending on the day of the week. For the large freshwater Amazonian pacus, the daily rotating choices include grapes and corn on the cob.
The golden crocodiles and water monitor lizards are fed rats that are stored whole -- fur and all -- in a large plastic bag inside an enormous walk-in restaurant-style freezer.
The fish at Shark Reef eat the same quality of food that is served at restaurants at Mandalay Bay, and the two use the same seafood distributors, State Fish and San Francisco Bay Brands, said Jennifer Rameih, marketing manager for Shark Reef.
The rats, however, come from The Gourmet Rodent Inc., a company based in Archer, Fla., Rameih said.
Each year, Shark Reef spends more than $150,000 on food for the animals in the exhibit, which equates to about 500 pounds per week, she said.
"The most frequently asked question we get is 'Why don't the sharks eat the other fish in the exhibit?' and the reason is that they are kept very well fed," Rameih said, adding that even with their predatory nature, the sharks generally won't expel the energy required to hunt and catch a wild fish when they can get their dinner for free from the Shark Reef staff.
According to Rameih, the sharks at Shark Reef have been trained to feed directly from the handlers. During feeding time, the staff turns on large lights above the 1.3 million-gallon tank holding the sharks. This light informs the sharks that it is feeding time, in much the same way a tinkling bell indicated to Pavlov's dogs that it was time to eat.
The sharks then swim up to feeding platforms above the tank and are given fish and sometimes antibiotics. They are assessed for diseases or other illnesses when fed, Rameih said.
Don't think that because these sharks are trained and have full bellies they have been transformed into gentle giants -- Shark Reef is no place for a pet fish.
"The sharks do eat the smaller fish now and then -- they are wild animals," Rameih said.
archive
