How to extract a hook from the belly of a shark without hurting either the animal or the stakeholders? In Nausicaa, the Center installed the sea at Boulogne-sur-mer, we found the answer. It takes cloves. In this troubled world, there are events going easily unnoticed but make a little honey from the news. The latter, mediated, has been filmed a presentation which illustrated the European Shark Week, held at the Sea Center of Nausicaa, Boulogne-sur-mer. Selachii A 20-year-old resident of aquariums Boulogne, had swallowed a large hook and could be released by surgery.

These are the trainers who have noticed a bulge in the belly of the animal, a shark (Carcharhinus plumbeus, more precisely), two

meters in length, thinner abnormally. The animal was asleep to make him an X-ray and ultrasound. These reviews have identified the right size hook stuck in the gastrointestinal tract, and probably from a piece of fish served with food.

Presented in the quarantine aquarium, shark woke slowly while humans were developing a strategy for saving in a team meeting around Alexis Leccu, veterinarian at the zoo in Vincennes.

Surgery was decided and a few days later the animal was anesthetized a second time. In fact, how do you sleep a shark two yards? The team used the oil of cloves, which is not surprising. The dried buds of the clove are traditionally known as an analgesic effective even as an antiseptic. They calmed many toothache among generations that preceded ours. Today, aquarium and aquaculture use oil of cloves as an anesthetic for fish.

Artificial respiration
The product has its office on the sandbar shark, who was asleep and could be transported on the operating table, installed within a few tens of centimeters of water. By hose stuck in the throat, a movement of water to the gills, enriched oxygen, avoiding the suffocation of the animal that is accustomed to breathe while swimming the open mouth.

The intervention of nearly an hour was used to extract the hook several inches in length. But it took three hours in recovery room (sorry, in a quarantine tank ...) for the selachii came to his senses and his fellows. The animal, which apparently he fully recovered, was the star of Nausicaa, which visitors are invited to contemplate the scar ventral.

This rescue also offers the opportunity to remember that sharks to look so daunting, especially form a group with many species are endangered. An estimated one hundred million the number of people killed each year, including the fins in Asia but also for their meat or by accidental fishing. Europe is a major consumer of shark and especially France. In the Mediterranean, 40% of species of elasmobranchs (sharks and rays) are endangered by the IUCN's Red List.