Will the sharks return to Reda? Locals and tourists have grown used to seeing them through the glass

Since July 26, when a chemical accident killed all twelve blacktip reef sharks, the aquarium in Reda has stood empty. The tank is undergoing modernisation, the company has not announced a date for restocking it, and for a week online opinion split into two equally sharp camps. All it took to see a different picture of public sentiment was to step outside the comments and ask people directly.

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19 august 2026   |   20:59   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Aquapark Reda

A town that grew used to its sharks

For a decade, the sharks in Reda were more than a tourist attraction. For many families from the Tri-City area and the wider Pomerania region, they were the reason for a first visit to the water park: the slide tunnel running straight through the middle of the tank, diving next to the viewing wall, feedings watched through the acrylic panel. Children who are teenagers today grew up coming back year after year, precisely for that.

That is why news of the animals' death struck deeper than just the venue's image. The empty tank, which guests using the pools and sauna zone still walk past every day, became the town's biggest talking point, and the question of whether the sharks will ever come back started coming up in conversation more often than questions about the cause of the accident itself.

1,017 votes instead of comment-section noise

Rather than rely solely on the tone of the discussion on social media, the Gazeta Morska editorial team decided to check public sentiment where the issue touches people most directly, at the water park itself. Over the past two weeks, our interviewers asked visitors one question: do they want the sharks to move back into the tank once the modernisation is complete?

In total, exactly 1,017 people were surveyed. The results are unambiguous:

• 77 percent of respondents want the sharks to return to the aquarium,
• 10 percent say they are indifferent, as long as something is swimming in the tank,
• 13 percent are opposed to restocking it.

With a sample of more than a thousand people, this is hard to dismiss as chance. More than three-quarters of respondents came down clearly on one side, and the share of firm opponents turned out considerably smaller than the scale and heat of the dispute in the comments after the accident would suggest.

A different picture than the one online

That contrast is itself a finding. For a week, social media saw extreme opinions clash, company statements appear and disappear, and posts stoking tempers on both sides. Anyone following only that part of the discussion could have come away thinking the dispute was split roughly down the middle. A survey conducted directly among visitors shows, however, that in the real, quieter response, support for the sharks' return is overwhelming.

It is a gap that turns up in many disputes over captive animals: loud, polarised discussion online does not always reflect what the majority of people directly affected by an issue actually think, in this case, the people who genuinely come to the water park.

A return is possible, but under different rules

The visitors' enthusiasm does not change the fact that any return of sharks to Reda today would not be a simple repeat of what was done in 2016. Since 25 November 2023, the blacktip reef shark, along with the entire requiem shark family, has been listed under Appendix II of CITES. This means any new restocking of the tank would have to rely on animals bred in captivity or transferred from another facility, not on a fresh capture and transport from the wild.

That route is realistic. Blacktip reef sharks breed in captive conditions, and the species is also capable of reproducing through parthenogenesis, as Gdynia Aquarium has previously noted. The stock needed to restock the tank without drawing on the wild population simply exists.

A voice hard to ignore

The survey result will not replace the company's decision, the technical systems audit, or the time needed to rebuild the filter biology. But with the water park drawing close to a million visitors a year, a clear signal from more than a thousand of them that they want the sharks back is a voice that is hard to leave out of that decision.

For now, the aquarium still stands empty, and the answer to whether and when sharks will live there again has not come. The survey, however, shows clearly what the people for whom that answer matters most would like to see.

A tank ready for their return

It is worth remembering that the infrastructure which kept twelve sharks healthy for a decade never went anywhere. The 330,000-litre tank, the artificial reef, the system simulating moon phases and time of day, the seawater preparation setup, all of it still exists and is currently undergoing modernisation, not demolition. Reda therefore has something many towns do not: proven infrastructure that has worked for ten years to keep this species.

That puts the Reda facility among places successfully keeping the same species for years. In Wrocław, blacktip reef sharks share the Mozambique Channel tank with two other shark species. In Gdynia, the species has been present since 2009, and Gdynia Aquarium has even documented cases of it breeding in captivity. Blacktip reef sharks also swim in Warsaw Zoo and are on display at Orientarium in Łódź. Worldwide, the same species ranks among the most commonly kept in public aquariums, partly because it tolerates tank conditions well, from Europe to Asia, including facilities in Seoul and Bournemouth.

Reda would not need to start from scratch or learn something no one has done before. Experience, proven infrastructure, and the company of other centres in Poland and worldwide that have long managed this same species add up to a picture of a place ready for the sharks' return, whenever that decision is made.

Aquapark Reda rekiny w Redzie żarłacz rafowy czarnopłetwy rekiny Reda

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