Shark 'Bukang-i' Returns to Open Sea After More Than a Month Stuck in a South Korean Port Canal
A shark known as Bukang-i has finally returned to the open sea after spending more than a month trapped in a port canal in Busan, South Korea. On Wednesday, at the third attempt, she was successfully guided out of the canal, the country's oceans ministry said. Officials expect her to move into open water in time.
The female dusky shark, about three metres long, had been marooned in the canal since 18 September. She was named after Bukhang, the Korean name for the city's North Port. The dusky shark is a species classed as endangered worldwide, which gave her long stay particular significance from the start.
During her month in the canal, the shark became a national celebrity in South Korea. According to the city, more than 1.6 million visitors came to see her. The park where the crowds gathered used to draw about 2,000 people on a busy Saturday.
Authorities had twice tried and failed to guide her back out to sea. Further attempts to free her had been paused on the grounds that more force would distress her. It was expected that cooler water might prompt her to move on by herself.
Her best-known guardians during that month were a group of self-appointed YouTubers and livestreamers. In South Korea they are called jagyeongdan, a word somewhere between neighbourhood watch and vigilante group. Each night they put on hi-vis vests, picked up their selfie sticks and gathered around the harbour to protect her from visitors who might disturb her.
They stayed up through the night calling out anyone shining torches or lasers into the water, and some of their videos have been watched hundreds of thousands of times. One of the protectors, Choi Won-jin, said people brought fishing lamps or campsite-style lights; online, such offenders are called 'lantern villains'.
The lights posed a real danger. A nearby YouTuber who goes by the name Na Tae-soo said his footage captured the shark twisting sharply away from a beam of light at 2am and striking the side of the canal. The national institute of fisheries science later confirmed an abrasion on her snout and said a visitor's torch was likely to have startled her into the injury.
Korean media reported that 105 officials from seven agencies watched over her, with a team on standby to reach the water within three minutes. Choi disputed this, saying that after dark it was almost up to him and the others.
The waterfront was closed to the public from midnight until 5am, a restriction the YouTubers said was impossible to enforce across a park of that size. One night, livestreaming from the walkway, Choi filmed a man tipping food waste into the water.
Nobody saw the shark feed, though experts said feeding could happen in an instant and that sharks of her size do not need to eat often. According to the fisheries institute, dusky sharks prefer water between 18C and 26C; below 15C her physiological functions would start to decline, and at about 11C survival would become precarious. Busan officials had expected the canal to reach that temperature after the middle of November.
The institute also recorded 46 large sharks off the east coast in the first half of this year, nearly four times as many as a year earlier, which it attributed to warmer seas and more of the fish that sharks feed on.
Affection for Bukang-i meanwhile became an industry, with a commemorative soju, a baseball mascot in a shark cape and an honorary city ambassadorship, and nearby shops reporting a surge in sales. South Korea's president, Lee Jae Myung, visited the canal in mid-October.
None of the guardians thought she should be forced out. Kim Jong-hwan, who runs a small business, kept watch by day as well and livestreamed her almost every day. In his words, she came in by her own choice, and if it got cold, if there was no food, or if the water did not suit her, she would leave by herself — she should be left alone to rest comfortably until then. After Wednesday's successful release, the hope now is that Bukang-i stays safely in the open sea.
