Cheryl Frois, Channel NewsAsia 19 Dec 08;
SINGAPORE: After an almost five-year dry spell, the Underwater World Singapore's leopard shark breeding programme has found success.
Three adult female leopard sharks are kept in reef tanks while two male sharks are rotated between them and thereafter the breeders take a backseat and let nature take its course.
James Hong, diver, Underwater World Singapore, said: "We had a male with a couple of females and sometimes they breed and sometimes they don't. We get egg cases but none of them were viable as they're not fertilised.
"We brought in another male about a year and a half ago and that seemed to do the trick. We have viable egg cases. We have five babies."
Eggs being eaten by other fishes in the big reef tanks is another big hurdle for the breeding process.
Jeffrey Mahon, curatorial director, Underwater World Singapore, said: "When we see a female that's ready to breed, we have all our divers jump into the tank with nets and we try to scoop them up as soon as they're born.
"Over the past six to seven years, we've had about nine or ten babies that have been successfully recovered that way, but a few got lost."
Hong added: "The babies are like human infants. They're helpless in the shell, so what we can do is pick them up, put them in better tanks with better aeration, better water quality to ensure a higher survival rate of those juveniles."
The next challenge for the breeders is to ensure the little guys thrive until they're big enough to swim with the other fishes. - CNA/vm
