The Aquarium’s star whale shark shocks visitors – because it turns out to be a robot

It was a whale of a failure.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the water park: A Chinese aquarium was torn apart by angry fans after its much-hyped giant shark was revealed to be a robot.

The “deep” counterfeiting took place at Xiaomeisha Sea World in Shenzhen, which opened in October. 1 after a five-year renewal, Jam Press reported.

During the weeklong dry spell, the 645,000-square-foot ocean zoo drew about 100,000 visitors, who paid about $40 to enter the wet wonderland.

Visitors were eager to see the theme park’s star attraction, a whale shark, the world’s largest fish capable of reaching over 60 meters in length.

However, many felt deceived after realizing that the so-called royal sea beast was actually just a mechanical doppelgänger.

Photos taken through the glass of the tank show the robot fish, which has visible gaps in its torso where its segments are connected, evoking a prop from a SyFy channel shark movie.

Outraged at the big white lie, park visitors flooded Xiaomeisha with a sharknado of online criticism.

“The place is not big enough, even the whale shark is artificial,” lamented one disappointed whale shark watcher online. “By 3 o’clock, people were already asking for refunds.”

“The most disappointing part was the whale shark exhibit,” wrote another on social media platform Xiaohongshu. “When I heard the name, I was full of anticipation, but when I arrived, I saw a mechanical whale shark. It’s not interesting at all.

Xiaomeisha representatives have since addressed the criticism, claiming the robo-shark – which cost millions of Chinese yuan to build – was not designed to “catfish” visitors but rather to comply with laws banning the whale shark trade. .

However, this shark tale didn’t make AI any easier to swallow.

“Even though it’s for the sake of animal protection, I’d rather they didn’t have one at all than show a fake one,” snapped one.

The same critic also objected to the park’s live creature exhibits.

“The care of the fish was not professional enough. I noticed that some of the fish in the tanks had white spots,” they wrote.

“Most people wouldn’t notice it, but anyone who keeps tropical fish knows that this is white spot disease,” they added. “Some of the fish didn’t seem to be in good health.”

Speaking of kicks, this is far from the first time someone has felt cheated by Chinese zoo animals.

Multiple zoos in China came under fire earlier this year for spray-painting dogs to look like pandas because they didn’t have actual animals.