By Brendan Rees
A two-tonne dead Great White shark that was rescued after being abandoned is in “good shape” since arriving at her new Devon Meadows home.
The shark, affectionately known as ‘Rosie’, was lifted onto the back of a truck and driven down the Bass Highway to Crystal World and Prehistoric Journeys on Thursday 21 February.
Owner of Crystal World Thomas Kapitany says his team had been busy de-rusting and cleaning up her tank.
“You can see how murky the tank is; we just needed to keep flushing the tank until she’s 100 per cent clean,” he said.
Rosie, who was originally found dead in 1998 in tuna fishing nets in South Australia, was preserved in the wildlife park in Bass.
However, since the park’s closure in 2012, her tank has sadly been the target of vandals, with side windows smashed and rubbish thrown inside.
“It’s massive creature,” Mr Kapitany explained. “She’s looking a lot better – quite a lot of scratch marks where things were dropped in around her, so she’s a little beat up.”
One of the laminated windows which was about one inch thick had been cracked by vandals, he said.
Before his team begin using expensive chemicals, Mr Kapitany said they needed to make sure Rosie’s tank wasn’t going to leak.
“At moment we’ve filled the tank up with 20,000 litres of water. We’re actually pressure testing her tank and see if we have any leaks,” he said.
It is the first time Mr Kapitany has taken on a dead shark at Crystal World which boasts more than 300 tons of specimens including crystals, dinosaur fossils and meteorites stored and sold from the site.
“I’m doing because I want to do it. To me this is what gives me my highs, not having money in the bank or having a flashy car.
“We know what to do, we know how to go about it, it’s just time and money,” he said.
He said he found some air bubbles on the glass window but to replace it would be “mind boggling expensive.”
After pressure testing, he said about $6,000 worth of glycerine would be used to get rid of creases on the shark’s body.
“Glycerine will give us optical clarity and the best state of preservation,” Mr Kapitany said.
He said a scuba diver in a dry suit had also been arranged so “he can move around and clean out the last bit of gravel underneath her.”
Mr Kapitany said they were in the process of building a new building for Rosie with a concrete pad to hold her final weight of 30 tonnes.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help raise $100,000 to prepare Rosie’s tank.
