As the Shark Season comes to a close at Macduff Marine Aquarium, staff are celebrating record October visitor numbers.
The annual two-week event – now in its fifth year – drew scores of families to the north-east wildlife centre as staff hosted interactive demonstrations.
Sharks have a ferocious reputation as villains and man eaters, but aquarium manager Claire Matthews and her team set out to dispel those myths with a serious of education events.
Last night, the centre boss said: “It’s been really brilliant. Every day we’ve had shark science presentations and that’s been the highlight.
“Sharks are hard to keep in captivity and we wanted to host an event to showcase the species we have. It’s been a great activity for the school holidays and we’ve had a record October.
“We even had a shark dissection – we took a dogfish, common in this area, that was caught in fishing nets and opened it up to see what it had eaten.”
Presentations covered everything from shark senses and reproduction to teeth and diet.
Recently guest speaker Dr Caroline Barelle, from Aberdeen University, was on hand to explain her work with sharks’ blood and how it can be used to fight cancer.
Mrs Matthews continued: “We had been due to release some shark pups into the sea here in Macduff, but we looked at our numbers and their size and decided they are not ready to be released yet.”
However tomorrow Mrs Matthews and her team will be releasing two six-foot Conger eels into the wild. The pair have reached breeding age and will now return to warmer, tropical waters.