No aquarium in the world has ever managed to keep a great white shark in captivity for long, despite many attempts.
California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium was able to house a juvenile shark for six months but unfortunately most of the time, the animals end up dead if kept in captivity.
The main reason great white’s struggle to survive in captivity is because they are nomadic creatures.
They are used to traveling about 50 miles per day in the wild. Swimming long distances allows them to breath easy and in captivity, they end up with horrible injuries from bumping into the glass walls in their enclosures.
Once a great white stops swimming or slows down, they begin struggling to breath and become weaker.
Also, the obvious…they have predatory instincts. Being put in enclosures with other animals is always risky. In 2011, Monterey Bay Aquarium decided to put a juvenile shark in an enclosure with other animals and they had to release the animal into the wild as it killed two of it’s tankmates…
