The Monterey Bay Aquarium — the only aquarium in the world to keep a great white shark alive in captivity for more than 16 days — put a new one on display Thursday after collecting it in ocean waters off Southern California two weeks ago.

The shark, a 4-foot-long young male, is the first white shark the aquarium has exhibited in nearly two years, and the sixth it has brought to the aquarium since 2004.

All five of the others — juveniles that drew huge crowds to the aquarium — were released back into the ocean after staying up to six months and either growing too big to safely keep or behaving in ways that led scientists to believe their health was in danger.

“When people see one of these animals, they can relate to them better,” said aquarium spokesman Ken Peterson. “They can learn it has a critical role to play in the ocean. And it is a beautiful animal.

“More people have seen great white sharks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium since 2004 than in all of human history because there are so few opportunities to see them in the wild.”

White sharks, which can grow to be 19 feet long and weigh up to 5,000 pounds, are found in all the world’s major oceans. In Northern California, they regularly are seen in an area from Marin County to Santa Cruz. They feed on sea lions, seals, fish, even sea birds.

Monterey aquarium scientists, who hold a scientific collection permit from the federal government, captured the shark on Aug. 18 off Marina del Rey.

They spotted it from a Cessna plane and brought it on board a chartered fishing boat with a purse seine net. The shark was kept in a 4 million-gallon open-ocean pen off Malibu for 13 days, and then put in a special 3,200-gallon mobile tank and driven to Monterey.

Scientists placed him in the aquarium’s massive Open Sea tank on Wednesday night.

“It started swimming really well from the beginning,” Peterson said. “It very quickly started showing signs we like to see when it gets relaxed. The tail wagging slowed, it navigated well around the exhibit, and it has established a sense of where the boundaries are.”

Peterson said biologists will carefully monitor the 43-pound shark and release it if it doesn’t eat regularly or exhibits other signs of distress.

“I can’t guarantee it will be here next week. But if it does do well — and navigates well, behaves well, feeds well — it could be here for 6 months, maybe longer.”

The Open Sea tank the shark is in can be viewed live on a webcam at www.montereybayaquarium.org

Although great whites were made infamous by Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film “Jaws,” they rarely attack humans. Since 1952, there have been 103 verified white shark attacks in California, with 12 fatalities.

Far more people are killed every year by bee stings and dog bites, said John McCosker, chairman of aquatic biology at the California Academy of Sciences.

“I’m so envious, as is everyone else in the aquarium trade, that Monterey aquarium has successfully kept white sharks alive as long as it has, and in so doing, changed the point of view of so many people,” McCosker said. “So many people enter the aquarium remembering ‘Jaws’ and leave with a new understanding about white sharks, and other sharks as well.”

McCosker said other aquariums have tried to keep white sharks alive after fishermen accidentally caught them. The animals are often traumatized and die, he said. By having scientists collect the animals, and then placing them in open-ocean pens to relax before being transported, Monterey seems to have found a way to exhibit white sharks, he said.

McCosker noted that up to 70 million sharks of all species are killed every year through a practice known as “finning.” Fishermen haul sharks out of the water, slice off their fins, and throw them overboard, still alive, where they slowly bleed to death. The fins are then sold to make shark fin soup, an Asian delicacy.

The practice is banned by U.S. vessels, under a bill signed by President Bill Clinton, but shark fins harvested by other nations are still imported into this country. Last year, Hawaii became the first state to ban the sale, possession or distribution of shark fins. A bill by Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino, would ban possession in California as well. It has passed the Assembly and is awaiting a vote as soon as Friday on the state Senate floor, although it faces opposition by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, and some Chinese restaurant owners.

Contact Paul Rogers at 408-920-5045.