Volume 1, No. 17. September 21, 2001
(Photo of guests enjoying the Shark Interaction Program at SeaWorld San Antonio. Photo courtesy of SeaWorld San Antonio)
It's
a Shark Interaction Program!
SeaWorld San Antonio in Texas announces the arrival of SIP, the Shark Interaction
Program, August 28, 2001. Measurements: Two-hour program, up to four participants
and 12 observers, countless sharks and stingrays.
A year in the planning, and following on the marine mammal theme park's successful
interaction programs with beluga whales and sea lions (BIP and SLIP, respectively),
the debut of SeaWorld's program to get guests up close and personal with sharks
had to be delayed when, out in the wild, people and shark encounters ended in
highly publicized, sometimes fatal attacks on humans.
"We just elected to wait because we didn't want to look like we were just diving
into this," said Paige Newman, supervisor of the park's aquarium department,
which runs SIP. "We put so much time into this, we didn't want to blow it."
So, the park did another month's worth of beta testing with staff, then, beginning
in early August, invited members of the media to try out the program. Finally,
late in August SIP went public. (See story on the attack's impact on Newport
Aquarium in Cincinnati by clicking here.)
Similar to the format used by SeaWorld's existing marine mammal interaction
programs, participants, paying $100 on days that the park is open (price includes
a full-day's admission) or $75 on days when the park is dark, start with a half-hour
of classroom instruction on sharks and their habitats. Then guests dress in
wet suits, receive snorkels and masks (which they may keep as souvenirs), and
head for the park's shark exhibit. In a holding area—where the water only
gets four feet deep (just over a meter)—adjoining the main exhibit, the
park installed a stainless steel fence with handles. Participants, accompanied
by an aquarist, learn how to snorkel, then submerge as the aquarist chums the
water, releasing chopped fish to entice the scalloped hammerhead, sand tiger,
bonnethead, zebra, wobbegong and nurse sharks closer to the cage.
Then comes what, according to guest response, is the program's true highlight
as the group visits the stingray pool and, bearing food, interact with those
animals. "It's one thing to be outside the pool and reaching down to pet the
stingrays," Newman said of the standard stingray exhibit at this is and other
SeaWorlds. "But to be down with the animals, eye level, and them accepting you
in the school and swimming with them, that's special. So many people have that
teary-eyed reaction."
Newman recounts several instances of people frightened to enter water near sharks,
but once in the guests almost refuse to emerge. "That's what I love about this
job, is getting them over their fear," she said. Initial post-program surveys,
meanwhile, yield the most promising results of SIP, especially in light of the
hysteria generated over this summer's shark attacks on the Eastern Seaboard.
On the question "Has your perception of sharks and stringrays changed for the
worse or for the better?" 100 hundred percent marked that their perception had
changed for the better.