Sharks Get Chance to Polish Image

The explorers, young and old, find themselves in a completely different world, one of fascination and danger--the world of sharks.

Amid the shimmering blue surroundings, they immediately encounter a white shark, the largest and perhaps the fiercest predator in the sea. It seems to hover above, looking poised to attack. Its mouth is agape, showing its array of razor-sharp teeth.

The explorers slip past unscathed.

A much leaner and less imposing blue shark is soon overhead, its white underbelly blending with the light shining from above, making it difficult to detect. A fisheries worker in scuba gear has clipped a tag behind the shark’s dorsal fin, the first step in tracking its movements, to learn more about the species, Prionace glauca .

A thresher shark is off to the left, virtually coiled around a school of anchovies. The shark’s tail, as long as its body, is used to slash through such schools of small fish. Stunned or injured, they make an easy meal.

Off to the right, a tiger shark looms above the sandy bottom, at eye level with the explorers. A child reaches out and touches its snout.

Beneath it lies a sawfish, with its saw-like snout. And a short distance away, a small girl notices something in the rocks. She points to her mother and says, “Mommy, come here, I’m looking at a shark in a cave.” It’s a nurse shark, sitting on the bottom, its head protruding from the entrance of the cave, its eyes cold and black.

The children are in awe. The adults seem equally enthralled at what they are seeing. In all, they view 17 of the world’s 370 species of sharks--all in one place, without getting wet.

As visitors to one of the city’s newest attractions, the international shark exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, they are witnessing firsthand what is being billed as “the largest and most comprehensive exhibition about sharks ever mounted.”

And since opening less than two weeks ago, it has been drawing about 1,000 visitors each weekday and substantially more on weekends.

“I had hoped in my heart that it would be well received, but I’d have to say I’m really surprised at the turnout we’ve had,” says Judy Chovan, science education specialist and project director for the exhibit, which after its three-month debut in Los Angeles will embark on a five-year tour of the United States, Canada and, probably, Australia.

Chovan, who for the last two years has worked full time on the project, had the responsibility of making the exhibit attractive to children as well as adults. Apparently, she has been successful.

The cartoon drawings and hands-on approach taken by the museum staff make it an entertaining as well as informative exhibit.

“It was done as an educational thing,” said Jeff Siegel, who along with Camm Swift supplied the biological data for the exhibit. “Not that it isn’t scientifically accurate, but it’s interesting and informative and at a level where kids and adults, as well, will be able to understand.”

Ask Jake Fasick, 8, of Sierra Madre. “It was really cool,” he said after leaving the exhibit. “I liked everything about it.”

His mother, Kelli, said: “I thought it was very good. There was a lot of information, and I think they did a very good job putting it together.”

Entering the diorama, visitors pick up a “dive card,” which is used to identify and provide information about each species in the exhibit. A light shining through air bubbles onto aqua-blue walls gives the impression of an underwater world. The surroundings are realistic, thanks to exhibit designer Cyrena VanDoorn, and the sharks so lifelike that some of the younger visitors were at first apprehensive.

“Are they real?” one young boy asks while gripping his mother’s hand. He soon lets go and roams wide-eyed among the creatures:

--The Atlantic manta ray in apparent flight. The dive card explains that this cousin of the shark has wing-like fins that can span 24 feet.

--Megamouth, a rare shark with a mouth shaped like--and almost as large as--a bathtub. Only four have ever been found.

--The nurse shark, which does not have to swim continuously to breathe but, like other shallow-water sharks, has special muscles to pump water over its gills.

--The spined pygmy shark, which inhabits the cold, dark depths of the ocean. It produces its own light, in a phenomenon called bioluminescence. This light is used to attract or locate prey or possible mates, to blind and trick possible predators, or for camouflage.

--The bull shark, known to roam shallow coastal waters. It has been found as far as 1,800 miles up the Amazon River.

Skates and small rays, related to sharks, line the sandy bottom, which in this case is actually the museum floor.

After leaving the diorama, visitors enter an area full of exhibits, fossils, fact-filled charts and posters, and brilliant underwater photography by Howard Hall, Bob Cranston and Chip Matheson.

There are also comic strips pertaining to sharks by Gary Larson, creator of “The Far Side.”

“Kids really relate to cartoons, and adults do, too,” Chovan said. “We’re trying to show kids that sharks do everything the kids do. They sleep, they breathe, they hear, they see. It’s sort of the Gary Larson approach. He’s got cows doing everything (people do). Well, we’ve got sharks doing everything (people do).”

An excavating machine is available for visitors to dig up a shark’s tooth, and then identify what species it belongs to. Included is a note stating that sharks are always losing teeth and have a lifetime supply in reserve.

A nearby scale will give your weight, then match it with the species of shark most likely to compare in size.

Life-size cartoon drawings of sharks on one wall includes a hint or two, so their common names can be guessed.

“Look, he’s crying,” one small child says, pointing to a shark with a teardrop in its eye. “He’s blue,” his mother explains, having guessed that the shark is a blue shark.

Another shark is holding a thermometer and wearing a Red Cross cap. Another has spots on its skin, and another a face like a dog. Still another has a halo above its head. Get the connection?

The magnificent jaws of Carcharocles megalodon are reproduced from fossil teeth taken from various locations, one of which is the famous Sharktooth Hill in Bakersfield. Many animals lived and died in this ancient sea, their bones settling to the bottom and forming a deposit of fossils six to eight inches deep.

“We have the world’s biggest collection of fossils from that locality, and we have materials that represent 125 to 130 species of extinct animals from that locality,” says Larry Barnes, curator of marine mammals at the museum.

Thought to have reached a length of 45 feet, the megalodon could have swallowed a skiff. In its day--15 million to 3 million years ago--it is believed to have fed on whales, before a change in size and habits of whales might have led to its extinction.

Around the next corner is King Neptune’s Seafood Market.

Laid out for the mako shark are mackerel and anchovies; for the bat ray, clams, the shells of which are crushed by the powerful plates in the ray’s jaws.

For the Horn shark, there are crabs and purple urchins; for the great white, salmon and sea otters--seals and sea lions being too big to fit in the case.

And for the tiger shark, much to the dismay of one young boy, there’s a small sea turtle.

“I wish he wouldn’t eat a turtle, don’t you,” the boy says sadly to a friend, who is too caught up to pay attention to the remark. “I wish he wouldn’t eat the turtle,” the boy says again.

He soon learns that sharks will eat about anything.

Nearby is a display entitled, “I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing,” featuring replicas of items found in the bellies of sharks:

--A suit of armor, from 16th-Century France.

--A West African drum.

--A Florida license plate.

--A fur coat.

--A cow’s skull.

--Miscellaneous small items, such as jewelry of all sorts, rocks, nuts and bolts and a pair of sneakers--which when found recently, off Florida, still had feet in them.

“We chose to leave them out of this exhibit,” Covan said.

Not left out are facts, lore and history.

Sharks have been around for more than 415 million years, as shown by the various fossils on display--and by the cartoon depicting a group of dinosaurs wading fearfully through a waterway teeming with fierce-looking sharks.

During the Middle Ages, royalty used fossil shark teeth to detect poisons in food and wine. Thought to be petrified snake and bird tongues, the teeth were plunged into a drink that might be laced with poison, and if a bubbling or color change resulted, it would be taken as a warning.

A chemical reaction occurred when the fossilized tooth made contact with an acid-based poison.

Besides being feared, sharks also were worshipped as gods. Until Capt. James Cook brought iron to the islands in the South Pacific, sharks’ teeth were the tools and weapons of choice.

Chovan flew to Hawaii and obtained a quote from Cook’s log, “A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, Vol. III.” It reads: “(Polynesian) drums are made of hollow blocks of wood covered with shark skin and instead of drum sticks they use their hands.”

One such drum is available for viewing, on loan from another museum.

Walking sticks made of shark cartilage, popular among the gentry of the 19th Century, can be seen in the exhibit.

Japanese pearl divers would offer a prayer so that they weren’t killed by sharks.

Doctors are in the experimental stages of using corneas of sharks in human transplants. There’s a bucket of them on display.

There’s a sample of skin being used to treat burn patients. When grafted onto burned areas, the shark skin acts as a scaffold upon which the new tissue takes hold. The shark skin is naturally broken down as the patient’s skin takes hold.

Medicine, soap, cosmetics, margarine, jerky and soup are merely some of the products made from sharks.

“I don’t like the picture of shark fin soup,” says Ando Muneno, 7, of Palos Verdes Estates. “Because I don’t like the taste of it.”

Siegel, however, says the pressures on sharks today are such that conservation efforts will be necessary if their populations are going to remain near present levels.

“Not only is (the exhibit) going to give people a good idea about sharks, they can come away from there with a little more respect,” he says. “These are animals worth considering when it comes to ecology, when it comes to conservation. People don’t normally think of sharks in that line. They think, ‘Sharks, big deal.’ Well, sharks are a big deal.”