The inhabitants of the Shark Shallows may include nurse, lemon, blacktip and reef sharks. Our friendly and knowledgeable marine operations staff will tell you about the current inhabitants at the twice daily feedings and talks. This is a unique opportunity to learn about these amazing and very misunderstood animals and pet a baby nurse shark with the assistance of one of our staff.

Or perhaps you would like to take a closer look at these sleek predators. We offer a Shark Encounter program during which you will have a personal briefing with a staff member and then actually enter the Shark Shallows.

Coral World collects the sharks in its exhibits from local waters. When the sharks in the Shark Shallows reach a certain size, our marine operations staff will release them to the sea. Because of the importance of sharks to ocean ecology and the threats to their survival, Coral World is engaged in a Shark Tagging Program.

For more photos and videos Find us on Facebook or check out the WOW! Blog entry about our sharks.

Lemon sharks are timid and will often swim away when approached by humans. Since 1580 there have only been 22 reported lemon shark attacks with no deaths.

Sharks are rapidly vanishing from our oceans because of habitat loss and overfishing especially for highly prized shark fins and cartilage. Without sharks, the incidence of disease among fish species would increase, some marine populations would explode leading to crashes among others, and the entire marine ecosystem eventually would break down.

Sharks have been in existence much longer than human beings. The first well-preserved early shark fossil to be discovered was Cladoselache dating from approximately 350 million years ago.