'Goodbye, Bukang': Busan's celebrity shark to be guided out to sea as early as Tuesday

Busan's celebrity shark, known as "Bukang-i," is set to be guided back out to open water as early as Tuesday, city officials said.

The Busan city government held a meeting Monday afternoon at North Port Waterfront Park, bringing together officials from the Busan Port Authority, the Korea Coast Guard and the National Institute of Fisheries Science to discuss a response plan. The meeting covered options for moving the shark to open sea and coordinating responsibilities among the agencies involved.

Participants agreed to mobilize equipment and personnel, with plans to begin using water pumps as early as Tuesday to push the shark toward the open sea.

Authorities have concluded they can no longer wait for the shark to return to the sea on its own. Bukang-i has been in the waterway for more than 10 days without any observed feeding activity.

"There are prey species such as mullet and horse mackerel in the waterway, but no feeding behavior has been observed," a National Institute of Fisheries Science official said. "The waterway — about 50 meters wide and 3 meters deep — is not suitable for a shark that lives in open water to hunt, and we believe the time has come to intervene."

The institute had earlier shared a plan with the relevant agencies to use water pumps to create an underwater current that would guide the shark back to sea.

Alongside this, authorities are also pursuing a plan to stretch a net the full width of the waterway to herd the shark toward the ocean. The institute has completed the net's design, and production is expected to take about three days once it begins. "Even if we succeed in sending the shark out with the water pumps, we plan to install the net at the waterway entrance for now to prevent it from returning," the official said.

Meanwhile, more than 568,800 people visited North Port Waterfront Park between Sept. 19 — the day after the shark first appeared — and Sunday.