See Sharks in Michigan Before Kids Head Back to School

A brown-banded bamboo shark rests at the bottom of the aquarium at the SEA LIFE Michigan Aquarium in Auburn Hills. (Photo via Facebook)

They’re all females bred at the SEA LIFE Minnesota Aquarium and were transferred to Michigan under a conservation effort to breed the sharks on site and share them among SEA LIFE Aquariums to limit impacts on wild shark populations, according to a post on the aquarium’s Facebook page.

In the wild, bamboo sharks are listed as near-threatened on the World Conservation Union’s IUCN Red List, due primarily to overfishing.

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The sharks are native to the Indo-Pacific area, and are found in waters off parts of Australia, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, the Province of China, Thailand and Vietnam.

Carpet dwellers, they glide among coral reef and prefer inshore, shallow waters.

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The sharks are about two and one-half feet long now. The brownbanded bamboo sharks will grow to between 25 and 30 inches, while the average white-spotted bamboo shark is between 24 and 32 inches when mature.

The sharks are housed in SEA LIFE’s Stingray Bay, but they may not be easy to find because they often hide in crevices in the reefs.