The two sharks, named Icarus and Achilles, had been held in a tank too small for them and with poor water quality. The stress of their confinement affected them so severely that they stopped eating and died in May and June.

Icarus, Achilles, another shark named Zeus, two blacktip reef sharks, and seven eels were all crammed into a 10,000-gallon tank—a size suitable for just one nurse shark.