World Shark Day, at the Aquarium you will find meet-ups, speeches, and an exhibition to get to know them.

On the occasion of the World Shark Day, celebrated on July 14th, the Acquario di Livorno organizes a series of initiatives dedicated to the knowledge and protection of these animals, with the aim of raising awareness among the public about the importance of their conservation. The program includes informative speeches, a permanent exhibition carried out as part of the Life European Sharks project, of which the Aquarium is a partner, and the meeting “Around the World in 70 Expeditions: face to face with sharks”, organized in collaboration with the Centro Studi Squali – Istituto Scientifico di Massa Marittima (Grosseto).

The initiatives are part of the broader commitment of the Livorno Aquarium to scientific dissemination and raising awareness about the conservation of the aquatic environment.

The speeches and the permanent exhibition – On the weekends of July 11th and 12th and July 18th and 19th, at 11:30 in the Sala del Relitto, visitors will be able to participate in the speech “A shark as a friend”. A guide will accompany the public in discovering the world of sharks, explaining the fundamental role that these predators play in the balance of marine ecosystems and helping to debunk the myths that portray them as a threat to humans.

The meetings are included in the price of the entrance ticket and no reservation is required.

Along the visitor’s path, there is also the permanent exhibition “LIFE European Sharks”, which allows visitors to learn about the shark species present in the Mediterranean Sea, their conservation status, and the objectives of the European project.

On July 19th, the story of 70 scientific expeditions around the world – To close the program, on Sunday, July 19th at 6 p.m., there will be the meeting “Around the World in 70 Expeditions: face to face with the sharks”, during which the researchers from the Centro Studi Squali – Istituto Scientifico di Massa Marittima will share experiences, images, videos, and results of their research activities.

The director Dr. Micarelli and the scientific coordinator Dr. Reinero, introduced by Giovanni Raimondi, scientific coordinator of the Livorno Aquarium, will review over 70 scientific expeditions carried out from 2000 to the present day.

The journey will touch South Africa, with studies on the great white shark and the copper shark, Madagascar and Djibouti for research on the whale shark and the gray reef shark, the Maldives, where three projects dedicated to the tiger shark, spinner shark, and gray reef shark are active, and the Philippines, where a project on the thresher shark has recently been started. Experiences in Greenland, with the Greenland shark, and Alaska, where the salmon shark has been observed, will also be discussed.

There will also be a focus on the Mediterranean, where the Centro Studi Squali has monitored the presence of the great white shark along the Italian coasts for seven years and has been following leopard nursery sites along the Argentario coast for eight years.

The aim of the meeting is to offer the public an opportunity to get to know these animals more closely and to help overcome the fear fueled by misinformation and a cinematic portrayal that has too often portrayed them as dangerous killers, rather than as essential species for the balance of the oceans.

The Life European Sharks project – On the occasion of the World Shark Day, the Acquario di Livorno also involved other Italian aquariums, in particular the Acquario Civico di Milano and Gardaland Sea Life Aquarium, both ambassadors of the Life European Sharks project, which promote initiatives dedicated to the conservation of sharks.

Life European Sharks is a project co-financed by the European Union through the LIFE program, started in 2023 and lasting for four years. It is coordinated by the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn and involves partners in Croatia, France, and Italy, including the Acquario di Livorno, with the aim of creating a broader network of entities, institutions, and operators committed to the protection of Mediterranean sharks.

The project aims to promote concrete actions and best practices to protect one of Europe’s most threatened groups of marine fish, currently at risk mainly due to accidental captures, pollution, and habitat alteration.