The Bluntnose Sixgill Shark was the star attraction at Wooton Park, Redondo Beach, on Sunday, July 6. People from all around the area came to the Shark in the Park event, put on by Highline College’s MaST Center Aquarium in partnership with the City of Des Moines, to learn about the deep-sea predator.
The ancient species of shark lives in the ocean depths for most of the year, except for when it surfaces to breed in the relatively shallow waters around Des Moines, between late spring and early fall.
Rus Higley, director of the MaST Center, described their presence as significant because the global population of the shark, which can grow up to 18 feet, is in decline.
Higley said, “The young ones stay here for a couple of years and then head out into the deep ocean.”
Also known as “cow sharks” because of the shape of their nose, they grow faster in the warmer, more shallow waters of the Puget Sound and there’s an abundance of food. Once they get older and head back down towards the ocean floor they tend to mostly be scavengers, feeding off things like dead whales.
Higley said that while no one knows the population of Bluntnose Sixgill Shark in our local waters, some divers have seen up to six of them in a single dive.
Highley, who’s in his 25th year at Highline, confirmed that “we are the only community college in the PNW, and one of very few in the country that has our own marine aquarium center.”
Shark in the Park, which went from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m., featured live science demos, hands-on ocean activities, family games and crafts, food trucks and local vendors and shark-themed exhibits.
Dedicated to expanding knowledge about Puget Sound, Highline’s MaST Center Aquarium serves as both a formal teaching institute and a public learning center. The 2,500 square-foot facility holds over 15 tanks totaling approximately 3,000 gallons of flow-through seawater, and displays over 250 native Puget Sound marine species.
The MaST Center Aquarium is free and open to the public on Saturdays from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., and Sundays during the months of July and August from 12 – 4 p.m.