hammerhead tagged posts

Thirty hammerhead sharks captured on the Great Barrier Reef and exported to a French aquarium over an eight-year period have all died in captivity and the Australian government says it knows nothing about it.

The deaths, which are the subject of legal action by Sea Shepherd France, could put a spotlight on the trade of threatened sharks caught in Australian waters because of a federal law that allows them to continue to be commercially fished.

The scalloped hammerheads were at Europe’s biggest aquarium, the Nausicaá aquarium in the French port of Boulogne, near Calais, and were imported in two groups, the first in 2011 and the second in 2018.

The last of the 30 sharks died two weeks ago, but the precise timeline and cause of all of the deaths is unclear.

Nausicaá has told E...

Europe’s biggest aquarium faces legal action over the deaths of 30 hammerhead sharks, which a marine conservation group alleges were mistreated. Sea Shepherd France announced at the weekend that it would file a lawsuit on Monday against the Nausicaá aquarium in the French port of Boulogne, near Calais. The last of the 30 sharks, which were introduced into the aquarium in 2011 and 2018, died on Thursday.

Sea Shepherd accuses the aquarium of “serious mistreatment” of the sharks and “breaches of environmental law”.

Philippe Vallette, the manager of Nausicaá, rejected the allegations and the claim that they died because they were kept in captivity...