Department Of Dubious Achievement–Free Jaws!: The Monterey Bay Aquarium is raking it in these days, with visitors up 50 percent. The reason: the aquarium has a Great White shark on display–a young female–despite the fact that Great Whites, which are engineered by tens of thousands of years of evolution to cruise the open ocean, inevitably die or freak out in captivity. In fact, the longest one has been lasted in a tank before this one had the misfortune to get caught in a fishing net and turned over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, was 16 days. Yes, the shark is in a million gallon tank. Yes, she is just over 4 feet long at the moment. And yes, it’s going on three weeks now, and the Aquarium says that there have been no signs of stress. But a shark like this might normally grow to 21 feet, and the Aquarium swears it will eventually be released before any harm is done. Hmmm. Do they make that judgment before or after they count up the days ticket receipts? Just let it go. We can thrill over Great Whites all we want when they are sighted off beaches or scare the wetsuits off divers and surfers…



Great White Inmate: “Now, if they’d just toss a live baby seal in here, I’d really give them a good show…”

(Photo: AP)