Sharks draw the crowds at marine exhibits with their promise of peril, but in this city’s aquarium lurks a bigger menace.
Lucy the turtle.
Lucy is a hawksbill sea turtle with a razor-sharp beak that can bite a chunk out of a keeper or chew away a tank’s fake-coral décor. At 200 pounds behind a hard shell, she can be a battering ram.
In the New York Aquarium’s tanks, not only is she more fearsome than Axl the shark, she is probably a bit of a thief, too.
“Divers in an aquarium are much more cautious with sea turtles than sharks,” says New York Aquarium director Jon Forrest Dohlin. The sharks here are relative milquetoasts. Well fed, they mostly keep their jaws to themselves and avoid expending energy.
Turtle-shark relations are a big concern at the aquarium, which is banking on the perceived danger of the latter to lure crowds to a new $151 million facility under construction at Coney Island. Opening in 2018, it will be named “Ocean Wonders: Sharks!”
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