Providing exceptional animal care
With input and guidance from the global community of public aquarium and zoo professionals and elasmobranch field biologists and researchers, the AZA SAFE Shark and Ray Program’s Best Practices for Elasmobranch Handling Events project has created a tool to support safe and efficient animal handling events that occur in situ or ex situ.
The Best Practices Working Group worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Conservation Technologies and Media Services Divisions to create the AZA SAFE Shark and Ray Handling App. The App is a tool to be used by elasmobranch handlers to guide the process of establishing handling protocols for animal welfare and wellbeing, and animal and human safety, that best fits their facility/environment, scenario, staffing, sampling needs, and species to be handled. It is designed to be used by anyone intending to handle sharks or rays in public aquariums, research laboratories, or in field research.
The app is composed of three decision trees and the answers lead the user either to the next question in the tree or to a document containing information to aid the user in planning an elasmobranch handling event. Several of the documents contain links to still image and video content from our partners to further guide the user. In addition a species considerations catalog contains additional guidance on particular handling needs of various elasmobranch groups and species. It is intended to be a living tool that will be updated regularly as new information and protocols are developed.
The App is the culmination of over 1500 hours of collaborative effort the working group undertook over the last two years, and was unveiled at the 2024 AZA Annual Conference. Currently in beta testing mode, it will be broadly available to users in 2025. A new implementation working group, along with training opportunities for users will also be available in 2025. Stay tuned….