Greenland Sharks!

[BreweryYardRat]

Totally cool non-sequitur (am I spelling that right?) information thread, because I was looking them up for something over on another forum.


They generally hit 8-14 feet, but specimens up to 21 feet have been found. The Florida Museum of Natural History thinks it might be possible for them to get up to 24 feet, but this is unconfirmed. The shark generally sticks to cold waters in the far North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, but occasional fluke sightings have been reported. In 1988, a robot sub spotted a 20-foot male Greenland shark off Savannah, Georgia, nearly a mile and a half down.

They're quite docile in the cold waters where the majority of them live, but are rarely seen as they prefer the cool deep, usually anywhere from 600-1800 feet. Further south, the depth for their ideal temperature increases, and they've been sighted at almost 4000 feet. Only during the winter, as the ocean cools, do the sharks get close to the surface. The picture below was taken by a dive group who lured the shark up from the depths with seal meat left over from an Inuit hunting expedition. The shark is capable of putting on short bursts of acceleration to take prey, but it was happy with the leftovers, and the divers were able to swim peacefully with it.


In (comparatively) warmer waters, like this member of a small group that wandered down to the St. Lawrence Estuary,

Greenland sharks get more aggressive and start acting more like a "typical" shark.

This may be the source of stories about them taking caribou drinking from rivers near the ocean's mouth. In cold waters, copepods parasitize the sharks' eyes, leaving them partially or totally blind. However, the darkness of the arctic depths forces the sharks to use smell in preference to sight (even more so than most sharks), so the copepods are less of a problem than they would otherwise be. The parasites may be unable to tolerate warmer water, as the sharks in the St. Lawrence were unaffected. That seems to nicely explain how the sharks in the stories were able to locate caribou.

Side note: First time I've ever seen a shark that looked cute, although the poor thing could certainly stand to cruise down to warmer waters and get rid of its parasites.


Sources:
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/GreenlandShark/GreenlandShark.html
http://www.arctickingdom.com/press_arcticshark.htm
http://divermag.com/archives/nov2003/atlantic_nov03.html

[Puglover]

1. I love sharks

and I love your post.

Thank you!

[RedCloud]

2. And I thought land sharks were a myth!

:shrug:

[mainegreen]

3. Interesting. The last photo looks like a stuffed toy under water. nt

[BreweryYardRat]

4. Doesn't it just?

I wanna :hug: it.

[jpak]

5. Also called "Gurry Sharks" by whalers

They used to swarm at whaling operations on the Greenland coast, feeding off the remains of processed whales...

[BreweryYardRat]

6. That's a cool tidbit.

Didn't know about the nickname.