38 years ago, an anonymous donor dragged a large, sloshing bucket to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, USA, dropped it at the reception desk, and disappeared. When staff pried open the lid, they discovered Bubba – a giant grouper fish, presumably caught and determined too big to take care of. A note attached to the lid asked for the fish to get to a good home.
Upon deeper examination, doctors learned more about the Epinephelus lanceolatus. At the time, she was only 10 in long, and was a Queensland grouper – a species fast disappearing in nature. The "super grouper" needed treatment, so they nursed Bubba back to health and found her a new home in a tank in the coral fish exhibit, where the predator happily swelled to 4.5 ft (1.37 m) and a whopping 69.3 kilos (150 lbs).
While there, she became a popular attraction, as visitors marvelled at her mysterious origin story and compassionate change in circumstances. And when she was briefly removed from exhibition in 1998, fans were distraught.
"That's when we found out how popular [s]he was," said Shedd spokesman Roger Germann, to the Washington Post, "because we started getting letters from people saying they couldn't find Bubba on their last visit and wanted to know what had happened."
Midway though the 1990s, Bubba underwent her second big life change as she transitioned to male, as groupers often do. This is a common reproductive strategy in fish species, whereby the larger female fish in a tank change sex to male, while the smaller fish remain female – and since Bubba was so big, scientists weren’t exactly surprised!
But scientists were shocked to find in 2001 that Bubba, their beloved grouper, had cancer.
While this usually is a sure sign of a fish’s demise, because of Bubba’s size, scientists decided to take the unprecedented step of treating him with chemotherapy. This was never attempted before on a fish, but groupers can live 30 to 50 years, so if successful, they would be making advances in cancer treatments, while giving Bubba years of his life back.
Luckily, Bubba responded well to the treatment, and he became the first fish to survive chemotherapy – and cancer!
After his treatments, he spent many happy years entertaining visitors and serving as an inspiration for human cancer survivors. The Shedd Aquarium reported receiving many calls from people affected by the disease, especially children, asking how Bubba was and gaining strength and courage from the knowledge that he had survived his own ordeal and that chemotherapy had extended his life. And beyond that, he was a personal favourite for many at the aquarium.
"Bubba overcame some incredible odds over the years, and that's what made him so special to us," said George Parsons, director of the Shedd's Fish department, to the Underwater Times. "Every once in a while for the last three years we have been getting phone calls from kids with cancer or from their parents, wondering how he is doing."
After regaining his health, Bubba was moved to a new home in the 400,000-gallon main pool of the Shedd's new $43 million Wild Reef gallery, so his fans could properly appreciate his beauty. He even got a new 5-inch friend – a golden trevally fish, which swims around him and eats his scraps.
"He is such a character," said Rachel Wilborn, one of his keepers, to the Washington Post. "He is so curious, always coming around to see what you are doing. If you give him a food item that he doesn't like, he spits it right back at you, then looks you right in the eye, waiting to see what else you can come up with."
After many happy years in his new home, the magnificent fish passed away in August 2006 from age-related issues. A Shedd official said his autopsy shows only “evidence of multiple organ system failure consistent with [Bubba’s] age.”
"It's going to be tough now, if I have to tell people he's no longer with us," said Parsons.
But nevertheless, even though Bubba has passed, his story lives on as a testament to the compassion of his healthcare providers and all who loved him. His body was even donated to Chicago’s Field Museum across the street, where they will keep Bubba’s skeleton as a part of its enormous fish collection and cryogenically freeze his tissue samples, preserving them for study by future generations of scientists.
"If you want to know why we went to all this effort for a fish," Wilborn said, "all you have to do is look into his adorable face. We did it for Bubs because he is such a cool fish."
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