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THERE ARE MORE than 400 known species of sharks and they have been on earth for 420 million years. That’s about 415 million years longer than humans have been around!
Humans are afraid of sharks because they look scary and sometimes attack people. But sharks should be more afraid of us — a full quarter of all shark species have been hunted to extinction by humans.
So, to help you become more familiar with these beautiful but scary beasts, we’ve ranked the best of the sharks based on unusualness, leaving out all the boring ones.
Here we go…
17. The Goblin Shark: Not only is it the ugliest shark, it’s also the pinkest. At 3 metres (10 feet) long, the goblin looks terrifying. It lives near the shore, too. But don’t worry, it’s a slow swimmer and doesn’t eat humans.
16. The Sawshark: It’s got a saw for a nose! These 1.7 m (5.6 ft) sharks swim in schools and use their scary snouts to dig for prey in the sand.
15. The Frilled Shark: The frilled shark lives deep near the bottom of the ocean, avoiding the attention of the media. It gets its name from the six sets of frilly gills that sit like a collar behind its head. It has 300 teeth and grows up to 1.8m (6ft.)
14. Great White: The Manchester United of sharks — people like it because it’s popular. But it is neither the biggest, nor the most deadly, nor the most exotic of the sharks.
13. The Speartooth River Shark: This 6-footer makes our ranking because it can live in both salty AND fresh water — so even swimming in a river won’t keep you safe. They have been known to bite humans, too. If you can avoid the mangrove swamps of Northern Australia you’ll probably be fine.
12. The Cookiecutter Shark: Doesn’t look like much, given its small size. But guess how it gets its name? Its teeth are set in a circular jaw, so that when it bites you it takes out a cookie-shaped chunk of flesh.
11. The Wobbegong: This bottom-dwelling 1.2m (4ft) Australian carpet shark gets its name from the Aboriginal, meaning “shaggy beard.” The Aussies eat them in fish and chips.
10. The Megamouth Shark: There are only about 60 living specimens of this incredibly rare beast. They grow up to 5.5m (18ft) in length. They aren’t much of a threat though: They eat plankton and only swim at about 2mph.
9. Megalodon: OK, so this shark became extinct 2.6 million years ago — but it was the largest shark ever, at up to 30m (98ft) long. This is a picture of a megalodon eating two whales! The inset shows how its jaws could comfortably accommodate a human.
8. Tiger Shark: This shark will eat anything, including humans. One study found the remains of goats, horses, and even cats in the stomachs of tiger sharks. It even eats garbage!
7. The White Tip: If your ship sinks, this is the shark that will eat you: It is thought to be the most deadly shark to humans, having consumed several hundred survivors of the sinkings of both the USS Indianapolis and the Novia Scotia in World War 2. It swims under the radar, however, because it is a deep sea fish.
6. Angel Shark: Looks like a ray, acts like a catfish. The 1.5m (4ft) angel sits on the sandy bottom of the sea waiting for smaller fish to go by, and then it ambushes them. Bites divers too, but not fatally.
5. Thresher Shark: Threshers look cool for a reason – they use their tails to whip individual fish, stunning them so they can be eaten. Half the body length of a 6m / 20ft thresher is its rear fin.
4. The Horn Shark: If you want a shark as a pet then the gentle, sluggish horn shark is the way to go. It hangs out on the seabed, grazing on shellfish until its teeth turn purple. Sleeps during the day and comes out at night. Never strays more than 10 miles from its home.
3. Basking Shark: Okay, we might be bias by thinking that this should be number one as this creature is often seen off our own coast.
This 12m (39ft) long beast is the second-largest fish of any type and can be found off the coast of Ireland and Scotland — or anywhere in temperate waters where there is lots of plankton that it can filter through its massive mouth and gills.
Here’s a bonus video of one swimming with some bathers off the coast of Cork as featured in the upcoming film, Aonrú:
Lost Productions / Vimeo
2. The Hammerhead: Do NOT mess with a hammerhead. They can grow up to 6m (20ft) and have 360-degree vision. Now consider their sex life: “the male hammerhead shark will bite the female shark quite violently until she agrees to mate.”* They eat humans, too.
1. Whale Shark: The whale shark is indisputably the best shark. It’s the biggest at 13m (42ft) and the heaviest at 21 tonnes. It doesn’t eat humans and younger whale sharks sometimes “play” with divers. In Vietnam, whale sharks are worshipped as “ca-ong” gods. In the Philippines, the whale shark’s portrait adorns the 100-peso bill.
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The Loan Shark……avoid at all costs!
The goblin shark is like something out of a horror film.
It looks like something from Alien, the way it’s mouth is shown!
A well written article. Given my moniker it’s obvious I like sharks, although you don’t see too many in the Boyne. As a wee lad I was fortunate to see a basking shark over in the west, to a child it was an enormous beast, it took some convincing that this huge monster only ate microscopic plankton. And then the film ‘Jaws’ hit the screens and confirmed that there was killer sharks in the oceans, I needed to know more and it was off to the local library in those days.
We didn’t get great white sharks, (Carcharodon carcharias) in Irish waters, but we did get other sharks, and over the years I’d seen fishermen catch blue sharks, dog fish and one or two other unusual breeds of sharks. It became obvious as I watched documentaries about shark fin soup and the large scale harvesting of all types of sharks for their fins, they’d be hacked off the sharks and their bodies discarded overboard, sharks had more to fear from us than we had from them. It’s estimated that 100 million (some figures put this at 273 million) sharks are killed annually, most of them in this manner, most for their fins, then their livers, which are very large and rich in oils, their meat and their cartilage due to the perception that sharks don’t get cancer. This is wrong, they can and do, but it has fuelled an industry selling shark products to the gullible.
As sharks are slow to mature and breed their numbers cannot cope with this level of hunting, 90% of the world’s large shark populations are already wiped out, sharks are being depleted faster than they can reproduce and, as apex predators, once they are removed from the oceans this will cause a knock on effect through the ecosystems.
Sharks can be dangerous, yes, in 2012 there were 7 fatalities due to sharks but 130 were killed in the US alone by deer and 20 by horses. Please, if you’re abroad, particularly in Asia, don’t buy shark products like shark tooth necklaces or shark fin soup, as long as there’s a demand for killing sharks the slaughter will continue, and don’t bother with shark cartilage products, it’s rubbish.
Loved your comment :)
Love learning about the sea,it’s so wonderful and so much is undiscovered.Which I am also happy about,as least a lot of these beautiful creatures will go unharmed from they hand of humans.
I woke up beside many a goblin shark let me tell ya -)
Hard not to read that in the voice of Louis Walsh. The whale shark really does have it all though, and is going to be a star.
Good article. Where’s the best area for seeing sharks in ireland? Some people only waffle on about a typo. Must make them feel smart for a second. Get a life
Achill and cork pretty good to see sharks.
Achill island is a regular haunt for baskin sharks, plenty of spots of west cork and Kerry too. April- early aug
Funnily enough Tralee bay is one of the most active locations for whale and shark spotting!
No Dennis o Brien on that list
Why does someone have to bring politics into every artical on the journal?
Got ripped to shreds by a card shark last summer, wounds still haven’t healed
Wonderful majestic creatures
Didn’t know half of these even existed! That Megalodon looked the business!
I read somewhere that on average 12 people are killed by sharks a year, while something like 11,500 sharks are killed by people per hour
The Bibi Baskin shark is quite rare and is occasionally found floundering around Montrose.
you forgot the bull or zambezi shark. the most aggressive of all sharks and can live in fresh or salt water.
I think the hammerhead is the weirdest shark.
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