/r/sharks
Sharks are amazing, important, and often misunderstood animals. We welcome enthusiasts, experts, and curious minds to dive in and explore the fascinating world of sharks!
A place for selachimorphaphiles to share discussion, experience, questions, photos, videos, research, original content, artwork, articles, and fashion. Pretty much anything relevant so long as it abides by our few rules.
Sharks should be appreciated, understood, and respected. Not feared, disregarded, and poached to extinction.
Sharks belong to the class Chondrichthyes meaning they have skeletons made of cartilage. Contrary to popular myths they do get cancer.
There are more than 470 species of sharks split across thirteen orders, including four orders of sharks that have gone extinct
Fossil records indicate that ancestors of modern sharks existed over ~420 million years ago, making them older than Dinosaurs! (~240 million years ago)
If you're incredibly lucky 1 in 11.5 million are the odds of a shark attack, and 1 in 264.1 million to die by a shark. In a lifetime, you are more likely to die from fireworks, lightning, drowning, a car accident, stroke, or heart disease.
For every human killed by a shark, humans kill approximately two million sharks.
/r/seacreatureporn (SFW)
/r/sharksporn (SFW)
/r/sharks
Has anyone actually seen a tiger shark while diving in the Virgin Islands (USVI / BVI)?
Looks like multiple sources say tigers can be seen there.
Searching for shark jaws, literally, for a present next year. Anyone know of a shop that sells a great white and will ship to uk?
Apologies if this offends anyone…
I really like the set made (sorry if the quality is bad)
Has anyone seen sharks in the virgin islands and if so were they just reef sharks, nurse or lemon or the typical ones like that or anything dangerous like tigers, bulls or whites - maybe lurking in deeper waters between islands?
To survive, you have to swim from one end of a swimming pool to another. It is a saltwater pool.
The pool is 100m deep, 100m wide and 200m long. You need to swim from one end to the other. How you swim is up to you, but you aren't allowed to carry anything with you except swimwear and goggles.
Pool A contains a Tiger Shark. Pool B contains a Great White Shark. Pool C contains a Bull Shark.
If you make it to the end, whatever injuries you have are magically healed, but you must be able to reach the other end by yourself.
Which pool are you taking your chances in and does this choice change depending on other factors?
Edit: all sharks are fully grown, mature adults of their species.
I saw this one while diving on the Maldives. What species is it?
Still working on it so it looks a bit janky
Hi, I hope this post fits the sub! I'm looking into learning about marine biology as a hobby and so far sharks have been one of my favorite marine animals to learn about. Are there any books you guys would recommend that are fairly easy for non-scientists or for someone who doesn't have that much knowledge about sharks? I take higher level biology in school so that's really the only background knowledge I have lol. Thanks in advance!
Photo source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29053754@N08/4409987541/
The Speartooth Shark lives in rivers in the north of Queensland and the Northern Territory in Australia, and in the south of Papua New Guinea. It’s one of the few sharks that can live in fresh water, and is part of the same genus as the Ganges River Shark (Glyphis gangeticus) of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Borneo, and Java, and the Northern River Shark (Glyphis garricki), which lives in the north of Western Australia and the Northern Territory and the south of Papua New Guinea. There are also two extinct species: the 3.6 million year old Glyphis hastalis of Great Britain, and Glyphis pagoda of Miocene Myanmar.
Hi, found this shark today unfortunately passed away.
Wondering if anyone could identity it? Looks like a bull shark to me but we are in NZ
We have reported it…
I was wondering, why are the encounters with big rare sharks actually so rare? Are the numbers so low or are we just not crossing paths with em via habitat? I mean we know a lot about smaller animals living in huge depths and yet big sharks like Megamouths or Bigeyed Sandtigers are completely left in the dust. Also Pacific and Southern Sleeper sharks are tough to research because of their habitat but the numbers or the potential sizes of these animals really intregue me. Like my knowledge of these deep dwelling giants is so lackluster and I seem to find contradicting research done on these creatures and it is very frustrating since they exist they are there but we just somehow can't find em regularly. For a context the recent footage of a pacific sleeper eating the fish outta stick was fascinating and there are so many big sharks like that whose behaviour or any data for that matter seems such a surface level. Whats your take on these subjects and how could we learn more from these beautiful animals?
I've seen plenty of videos of Great Whites in particular going up to cage divers and chomping at the bars. As menacing as this looks, I know that this isn't a deliberate attack. However, my current knowledge suggests that it is instead an investigative bite. Sharks can only test if something is edible or not by biting it, and usually when they recognise something isn't food, they'll be on their way.
Is this really the case? Would they have any other reasons to come up to a big metal cage to give it a nibble? I recognise how suggesting that it's an "OWO what's this?" behaviour could potentially risk anthropomorphising these animals, so I want to challenge my hypothesis (guess) with those who potentially know more than me.
I've seen just as much footage of people diving openly with even the biggest Great Whites, and said sharks couldn't care less if they're not being bothered. Obviously, there is some potential for selection bias here. Footages of sharks attacking cages reinforce the conformation bias of people who are predisposed to seeing them in a negative light.
So, this brings me to my bigger question. Are sharks more likely to "attack" (put in quotes because I doubt that's what they're really doing) cage divers in comparison to just swimming with them normally?