Prickly Shark lives to see another day

First bats, now sharks...how do I end up with these assignments?

A four foot prickly shark was captured recently off the coast of California. It was held captive for the enjoyment of visitors at the Monteray Bay Aquarium. The spectacle only lasted for a few hours however, because the fish started acting oddly in the tank and was released back into the wild.

This is apparently only the second time that a prickly shark has been held in captivity, and thankfully those involved were smart enough to release the shark before they had a needless death on their hands. Prickly sharks are bottom dwellers and this particular one was caught at the depth of 3,000 feet. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that a creature used to living at those depths might have some issues with being thrown into an aquarium tank above sea level.

While some sources online state that the prickly sharks' population is being reduced due to overfishing, the Wikipedia prickly shark entry has the conservation status of this shark as "Near Threatened" which is only one notch above "Least Concern". Still, there could have been one fewer of these exotic looking sharks just to add some extra publicity to the aquarium.

The captured shark was only four feet long, which is pretty small for a species that can grow up to a maximum size of four meters.