Oxygen Consumption Rate of Young-of-the-Year White Sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, during Ttransport to the Monterey Bay Aquarium

In 2002, the Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA) started a project to display young-of-the-year (YOY) White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in the 3.8-million-L Outer Bay exhibit and to conduct field research on the movement patterns of this highly active predator in the Southern California Bight. A pelagic fish transport tank used to bring YOY White Sharks to the MBA between 2004 and 2009 allowed the first direct measurements of oxygen consumption rates (MO₂) of free-swimming White Sharks during transport, ranging in duration between 5 and 7.5 h. We obtained MO₂ data during five transports of four individual White Sharks [137-157 cm of total length (TL) and 22.6-36.2 kg of body mass] at water temperatures ranging from 15.2 to 17.9°C. The mass-specific MO₂ calculated from 16 measurements for the four sharks was 246 ± 13 mg O₂ kg^-1 h^-1 (mean ± SE), which is among the highest reported for any shark species. Total MO₂ values of White Sharks from our study were pooled with the routine metabolic rate of the Shortfin Mako Shark to estimate the mass-scaling relationship for lamnid sharks, which is described by the allometric equation MR = 458.5 × M^0.79.