Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Discovery Channel will celebrate Shark Week

By Cindy Hanson 

Newport, OR - The Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Discovery Channel will celebrate Shark Week August 2 – August 8 with a variety of events highlighting the fascinating world of sharks. Breakfast with the Sharks will kick off Shark Week, allowing visitors to enter the Aquarium before it opens to the public and enjoy a hearty breakfast while learning more about sharks.

Breakfast with the Sharks will take place Sunday, August 2, from 8 to 9:30 am in the Gleason Event Room in front of the private viewing window of the Sharks in the Passages of the Deep exhibit. During breakfast, visitors will watch the sharks being fed their breakfast by husbandry staff while an Aquarium biologist gives a talk about their diet, behaviors and physiology. Breakfast, provided by the Aquarium’s Local Ocean Café, will be a variety of breakfast offerings freshly prepared by Enrique Sanchez, award winning Local Ocean chef. Cost for non members is $35, for members, $30. Reservations are required by calling (541) 867-3474 ext. 2313.

Shark Week spotlights sharks as important members of their ocean habitats, unlike the man-eating monsters portrayed in the movies. Sharks live in oceans around the globe—from warm shallows to the cold, deep sea and even fresh water lakes. All of the sharks exhibited at the Oregon Coast Aquarium are species native to Oregon’s coastal waters. Visitors will meet the sharks from Oregon’s coast in the week-long glimpse into the world of sharks.

During Shark Week, the Discovery Channel will offer a week-long series of feature television programs dedicated to facts on sharks. Sharks and their ancestors have presided over the seas for nearly 400 million years, but in the wild today, shark populations are suffering from human activity. Through habitat destruction and overfishing, humans have become more dangerous to sharks than they are to us. Sharks have been depicted as man-eaters and killers for centuries. The reality is that of the more than 350 species, only a handful pose any threat to humans.

Shark Week Activities:
- Breakfast with the Sharks Sunday, August 2, 8:00-9:30am
- A free raffle for an Aquarium gift basket full of shark items
- Shark books, DVD’s and educational toys available in the Aquarium Gift Shop
- Children’s shark craft
- Fascinating shark bio facts
- Shark dissections and talks
- The opportunity to adopt a shark
- Face Painting Sunday, August 2 and Saturday, Aug 8

The Oregon Coast Aquarium is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit educational attraction dedicated to the highest quality aquatic and marine science programs for recreation and education so the public better understands, cherishes, and conserves the world’s natural marine and coastal resources.

Photo Caption: Spiny dogfish, Squalus acanthias, one of five species of shark at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. A small schooling shark that forms groups of hundreds or thousands of individuals of the same sex and size. It is an opportunistic feeder eating small fishes and invertebrates. Photo by Cindy Hanson, Oregon Coast Aquarium

To view Oregon Coast Aquarium's web page on Zoo and Aquarium Vizitor, go to: http://www.zandavisitor.com/forumtopicdetail-9-Oregon_Coast_Aquarium