Bertha Goes Belly Up
Bertha, a sand tiger shark who had lived at the New York Aquarium since the 1960s and was believed to be one of the oldest sharks in any aquarium in the world, died on Saturday.
As a last resort, the aquarium had euthanized Bertha. “She had been in declining health over the past month or so and we had started a series of treatments for her,†he said in a phone interview. “She seemed to rally a couple of weeks ago and was doing really well, but at the end of this past week, she showed another decline. We ended up restarting treatments again. When we realized they didn’t have any effect, we knew that it was time.â€
She was put down around 4 p.m. on Saturday.
Bertha lived with five other sand tiger sharks, two nurse sharks and a white tip reef shark in a round, 90,000-gallon tank. She was about 8 ½ feet long and weighed just under 250 pounds. She had no offspring. She was believed to be at least 43 years old.
R.I.P. Bertha!
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Aww Bertha baby, rest in peace… (though is any one else thinking it would have been sort of fun to watch nature take its course with all those other sharks in the tank…..)