Shark facts
Short facts, and straight answers to things people say about sharks. Every one lists where we found it.
Short facts, and straight answers to things people say about sharks. Every one lists where we found it.
Records
The basking shark swims with its huge mouth open and filters roughly 2,000 tons of seawater an hour to catch tiny plankton. It is the second-largest fish after the whale shark, and it is not a danger to people.
Records
The whale shark is the largest fish in the ocean and can grow to about 12 metres (40 feet) long. Sharks longer than that are rare.
Sources: NOAA National Ocean Service: What is the biggest fish in the ocean?
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The Portuguese dogfish has been found as deep as about 3,700 metres (12,100 feet), the deepest of any shark known. Most of the time it lives at depths of roughly 400 to 2,000 metres.
Sources: Guinness World Records: Deepest shark, FishBase: Centroscymnus coelolepis
Records
Shortfin makos have been measured swimming at about 50 kilometres an hour (31 miles an hour). Some reports claim even faster bursts, but those top speeds have not been measured well.
Sources: Shark Trust: The Blowfish on the world's fastest shark, BBC Discover Wildlife: Fastest shark in the world
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A great white has about 300 serrated teeth set in several rows. Most of them are spares that move forward like a conveyor belt as the front teeth fall out.
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A great white shark named Nicole was tagged off South Africa in 2003 and swam to Australia and back, about 20,000 kilometres in nine months. At the time it was the first round trip across an ocean ever recorded for a shark.
Sources: National Geographic: Great white breaks distance and speed records
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The Greenland shark is the longest-lived backboned animal known. Scientists who dated 28 of them by looking at their eyes estimated that the oldest was roughly 400 years old, and at least 272, though the exact age is uncertain.
Sources: Sci.News: Greenland sharks are the longest-lived vertebrates on Earth
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A female whale shark nicknamed Anne was tracked swimming about 20,142 kilometres (12,500 miles) across the Pacific Ocean over 841 days, the longest whale shark journey ever recorded.
Sources: Mongabay: Longest recorded whale shark migration eclipses 20,000 kilometers
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The dwarf lanternshark is one of the smallest sharks in the world. Adults are only about 16 to 20 centimetres (6 to 8 inches) long.