THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606210737
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: SPECIAL EDITION: A VISITOR'S GUIDE TO THE EXPANDED VIRGINIA MARINE
SCIENCE MUSEUM
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY
STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 55 lines
DUM ... DUM ... DUM. You're in the presence of .#.#.# sharks!
With their uncanny senses of sight, hearing and smell, along with the ability to detect electrical impulses, sharks are efficient and merciless hunters.
And in a new exhibit in the main building, visitors to the museum can get a taste of how deadly they can be to small prey.
Here's how one display works:
As you grasp a wooden fish at one end of the display, a shark at the other, depicted at more than a mile away, already has detected a potential meal by sound waves.
At the same time, a recording that resembles the soundtrack from ``Jaws'' makes it clear this is deadly business.
As you move the fish closer to the shark, information panels light up. The first tells you that at a mile, with blood in the water, the predator's sense of smell kicks in.
At 600 feet, the shark picks up movement through special receptors along its body.
At 100 feet, even in low light, the shark sees outlines of shapes.
At 10 inches, just before contact, special pores in the head pick up electrical impulses given off by its prey - even if it's buried in the sand.
Glump! Your little fish is history.
This is one of several displays in the museum's shark exhibit, a corridor that runs beneath suspended life-size models of hammerhead, thresher and tiger sharks, and a relative, the sawfish.
The Virginia coast plays host to about 80 of the world's 250 species of sharks. The museum displays explain how sharks' teeth work (cutters, rippers and such), how strong their jaws are (a hand-grip device explains biting power) and their anatomy (lift a handle and see a shark's insides).
Visitors can crawl under a shark's head model and stand up inside its jaws.
They can touch a shark skin and see actual egg cases laid by live chain dogfish, a species of shark, swimming in a nearby aquarium.
After the educational journey, visitors can then head for the museum's Norfolk Canyon where several real sharks can be viewed.
The museum treats sharks as well-equipped feeding machines that are dangerous to their prey, though not necessarily to humans.
Says curator Maylon White, who has dived with sharks, ``I think they're worthy of our awe and appreciation, but not fear.'' ILLUSTRATION: Universal Pictures
A GREAT WHITE closes in on his prey in a scene from jaws 2. one of
the museum's hands-on displays lets visitors experience a hunt from
the shark's point of view. by SS