This coming week, as Discovery Channel airs hours of footage featuring tiger, hammerhead, and Great White sharks, visitors to the St. Louis Aquarium can have a more hands-on Shark Week experience.
From July 23–30, the aquarium is hosting their own weeklong celebration of the species featuring behind-the-scenes tours of Shark Canyon, children’s activities, and opportunities to interact with sharks and other related species in the touch pool.
Stay up-to-date with the local arts scene
Subscribe to the weekly St. Louis Arts+Culture newsletter to discover must-attend art exhibits, performances, festivals, and more.
“Every day is Shark Day here,” says director of animal projects Erin Clark. “Shark Week just gives us an opportunity to really focus on it because it’s on people’s minds. There’s lots of opportunities to learn a little bit more about them.”
The goal, says Clark, is to introduce visitors who may harbor fears about these essential predators to their importance in ocean ecosystems and help inform them about the relative lack of danger they pose to humans. As one screen leading into Shark Canyon states, humans are five times more likely to be harmed by a cow than a shark.
“Half of all shark species don’t grow any larger than three feet,” says Clark. “So we’re bigger than half of the sharks swimming in the ocean by the time we’re in kindergarten.”
This is abundantly clear on the second floor, where a touch pool lets visitors of all ages interact directly with multiple species of stingrays—all of which are native to the Atlantic coastal waters that many St. Louisans flock to for vacations—and small species of sharks, including bamboo sharks and small-spotted cat sharks. Helpful aquarium staff also assist brave folks around the pool in hand-feeding the creatures.
“Living in the Midwest, your engagement with marine animals is often during vacation,” says Clark. “Being able to have that opportunity and not have to travel to Florida is just very cool, because it gives you a different appreciation when you then do go to the ocean. You’re not starting from scratch. You have a baseline of information.”
Before moving on to Shark Canyon, families can stop by the Kids Zone to let the little ones make their own shark hats and color their favorite sea creatures, which are then scanned into a virtual aquarium on the wall.
For $16 per person, there’s an exciting experience behind a nondescript door near the Shark Canyon entrance. The VIP tour gives visitors access to a behind-the-scenes area where the Shark Canyon tanks can be viewed from above. The daring can take a walk along an enclosed rope bridge over the shark-infested waters—to be clear, there’s no real danger here, only exciting views of the sharks, rays, sea turtles, and fish below—before moving on to view other areas such as feeding and veterinary care facilities.
The Shark Canyon viewing area itself offers many different observation areas, from small windows and glass ceilings to whole walls. Alongside fish, rays, and a pair of rescue sea turtles are several larger species of sharks, among them nurse, zebra, and sand sharks. Throughout the day, divers enter the tanks and provide Dive Chats, where they discuss the creatures on display and answer questions from underwater.
Through these experiences, the aquarium hopes to change perceptions around sharks and instill care for the creatures in those who visit them.
“I hope people leave with a stronger appreciation for the important roles that sharks play in ecosystems, and that they’re not something we have to fear—they’re something we have to protect.”
