Celebrity shark guided out of Busan canal after more than a month
A dusky shark that drew more than 1.6 million visitors to a canal in Busan has been herded towards open sea after earlier attempts failed.
A female dusky shark that was stuck for more than a month in a Busan canal has been coaxed back towards the open sea, the BBC and The Guardian reported. Nicknamed Bukang-i, she had drawn over 1.6 million sightseers to the South Korean waterfront.
Citing the country's oceans ministry, The Guardian said the effort succeeded on Wednesday, on the third try. The BBC gave more detail. Divers put two layers of netting in place that day and drove her out, it said, but she slipped beneath the outer net during the night and returned. Rescuers took that net away on Thursday, and she was then seen moving steadily seaward. She did turn back at times, according to the BBC, though by then the operation had been wound up.
Roughly 3 metres long, she had been in the waterway since 18 September, The Guardian said, adding that dusky sharks are listed as endangered globally. Her nickname comes from what Koreans call Busan's North Port.
Earlier bids came to nothing. The BBC said a coastguard vessel first spent five hours trying an electrical deterrent. A National Institute of Fisheries Science team then used water jets and, on 2 October, stretched netting across the canal. The shark got around it and returned within a few hours. "This canal is far from something we can call a habitat," Kim Hyun-woo, the marine biologist leading that team, told the BBC.
The oceans ministry then took charge and deployed about 40 people, among them divers from the city's aquarium, the BBC said. The Guardian, citing Korean media, said 105 officials from seven agencies had been keeping watch over her. Choi Won-jin contested that. He belonged to a group of YouTubers who walked the canal each night urging the public not to point torches or lasers at the water, and said that once darkness fell, the task was left almost wholly to him and the others.
Fisheries institute scientists confirmed she had a grazed snout and believed a visitor's torch had probably frightened her into hurting herself, according to The Guardian. Mid-October brought a canal visit from President Lee Jae Myung. Not every admirer backed the rescue: the BBC said some turned up with placards, shouting "leave Bukangi alone".
The outlets' shark counts differ. The Guardian said the fisheries institute logged 46 large sharks off the east coast between January and June, close to quadruple the tally a year before. The BBC put the figure at about 50, four times last year's count, and reported the oceans ministry's view that she may have pursued abundant fish into warmer seas.
She has not been spotted for several days, which experts described to the BBC as encouraging. Choi Yoon, a professor of marine biology, said she probably had not gone far and might show up again within the next week.
Sources: The Guardian, The night watch: the YouTubers who are guardians of a shark stuck in a South Korean canal; BBC News, A shark went astray and captured Korea's heart - will she finally make it back to sea?.
