Hello and welcome back Shark. Here is to another episode of
Deep Dives with Sharks. My name is Alex.
I'm the guy that tells you all the shark facts and we find out
if they're true or not. So far a lot of them have been
true and if they're not, well that's why we have Correction
Corner. We've made it to another episode
and I got it out only a week late, which it's a holiday
miracle. Now, I do hope that everyone had
a good Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any other holidays
you guys might celebrate and of course, an amazing new year as
well. I want to thank you all once
again for being here, listening when new episodes come out and
sending in requests and so many messages.
I got a few really nice messages over the past couple weeks and
it's been incredible to get all these messages from Shark Here's
across the globe and join the podcast and sending in
suggestions. It's been incredible.
I'm still rolling with the three shark episodes because in the
couple weeks that it's been since the last one came out, it
appears more people listen to the end of that episode.
And you know, I'm just going to keep that going.
So let me know what you think in the comments or on Instagram or
really anywhere else. And of course, if you want to go
back to the other way, let me know that as well.
We'll try to keep going there and give you what you want
because if people like more sharks, we'll make that happen.
And if they don't, well, we'll do less.
But of course, you guys can follow along on Instagram at
deep dives with sharks, over on Twitch at deep dives with
sharks, and of course, couple other places.
I'll try to put a link tree up somewhere so that way we can
hopefully get all those compiled somewhere.
But to jump right into it, the first shark that we're going to
do for this week is going to be 6 kill sharks, specifically the
blunt nose, 6 kill. Now 6 kill sharks are in the
family Hexakaidae. This family has more members
that are extinct than alive, but they do have dogfish and
Greenland sharks. So they have some sharks to
spend the holidays with which is rather nice.
Now these sharks kind of look like a mix between the dogfish
and Greenland shark, so it makes sense why they're all related as
they have a rounder head like the Greenland sharks but a
longer tail like the dogfish. These sharks tend to grow to be
about 18 to 20 feet or 5.5 to 6.1 meters.
They do vary in size based on gender, as males will grow to be
about 3.1 to 3.3 meters or 11 to 14 feet.
The Blunt Nose 6 gill shark is usually tan in color, although
some have been observed to be brown or even black.
They have a distinct line that separates their counter shading
on their light underbellies and their Gray top.
They often have some spots along their sides that kind of look
like stains and the order they get, the more stains they get.
It's kind of like how humans get more spots and marks on us as we
age. You know, scars, liver spots,
things like that, the whole 9 yards.
Now the 6th skill is typically around 1100 lbs when fully grown
or 500 kilograms, although they can get up to 2200 lbs or 1000
kilograms which is insane. They have a large round face
that kind of looks like a Greenland shark, but it has more
rounded nose and it's flatter on its face.
Smaller wide set eyes. A wide mouth that has 6 rows of
teeth that resemble the teeth on a saw.
Now that'd be on their lower jaw.
Their upper jaw has smaller teeth that I I'm assuming help
with gripping things but I'm not quite sure.
I couldn't really find too much on that.
These sharks also have fins which is rather shocking.
Their pectoral fins are lower on their body, similar to a Makos,
and they have square pairs of caudal and anal fins.
Their dorsal fin is above their caudal fins and it's situated
just before their tail. Their tail is longer on top than
the bottom, which helps when they're swimming towards the
ocean floor because it's kind of hard to move the entire time,
your tails just dragging through the sand and doesn't really get
you to go too far. Now as her name was suggest,
they have 6 skills. Usually sharks have 5 gill
slits, so these guys just get to breathe that much better.
It's like having a third lung. And while that is a bit of a
joke, there's also a lot of truth behind it.
These sharks did evolve to have that 6th gill as they inhabit
areas of the ocean with little to no oxygen.
Having an extra gill helps to bring in any oxygen that could
be around. So if you feel like you need a
little bit more air, stay away from a 6th gill shark.
They're going to steal the breath right from your lungs.
It's terrible. Now the blunt nose 6 skill shark
can be found around every continent except for Antarctica.
They don't like the cold that much.
They have been observed around the southeastern United States,
including the Gulf of Mexico, the West Coast of the US,
Canada, Mexico, all around Europe, north of northern
Africa, Argentina, Chile, Namibia or Namibia.
I can't remember exactly how to say that.
That country. Iceland, Madagascar, Japan,
Australia, Hawaii, Greece, Malta, the Korean Peninsula, and
southern Central America from Honduras to Panama, so quite a
few places there. They tend to spend their time
around the ocean floor, but will travel through the water column
off the continental shelf. They are often found between 180
to 1100 meters deep or 590 to 3610 feet deep, although they
have been known to come to the surface as deep and as deep as
2500 meters or 8202 feet. At the extremes, juveniles often
stay closer to shore, similar to great whites for protection and
easier food source, but they're often not found to close.
They do keep a little bit off the shore, so they're not quite
as in as other sharks would be now.
These sharks will migrate through the water column every
day, searching for food specifically at night.
Researchers discovered when they lose that they lose more energy
swimming back down to deeper water than they use when they
swim up to the surface, which led researchers to believe that
they have an adaption that aids with buoyancy to help conserve
energy. Now, not only do the six gills
migrate daily, but they also migrate seasonally.
They follow their food as the seasons change, moving across
hemispheres at certain times. Now what's really cool about
these sharks compared to others is their ability to change the
way they hunt and eat prey. Often sharks will stick to one
method such as nurse sharks utilizing suction feeding.
But when 6 gills switch from lateral and saw cutting when
eating to ambush tactics such as lunging their draw forward to
snatch and latch on to prey. Kind of similar to what a goblin
shark does, but not quite as much as they can because holy
smokes, the goblin can definitely move its jaw.
Now this variety helped to allow for the 6th gill to have
worldwide distribution and feed on a variety of prey.
Their prey includes raise shamara fish, shrimp, seals,
squid, and crabs. If necessary, they will hunt
outside of their normal prey to eat other sharks, Bony fish, and
even marine mammals. The six gill shark is
ovoviviparous as many other sharks and can have anywhere
from 22 to one O 8 pups in a litter.
So 108. I don't know why I said one O 8
it's fine we get it. This could be why they have are
listed as least threatened despite being aggressively
haunted. They have very limited
interaction with humans as we aren't in the deep ocean very
often and there are very few bites but they do occur as these
sharks sometimes target are targeted by sports fishers.
Their season is short which allows the population to not be
damaged as badly which may lead you to think well if their
season is short then how can they be aggressively haunted?
And that's an amazing question. And that's just because they
aren't being hunted by humans. You may have heard of the Orcas
Port and starboard the absolute bombs.
They've been hunting 6 gill and great white sharks around South
Africa and removing the livers with surgical precision.
When local authorities found the 1st 6 gill shark with his liver
removed, they believe that a Fisher had caught it, removed
the liver and threw it back until after some time the orcas
were reserved to be the observed to be the culprits.
They have drastically diminished the populations around South
Africa but have not travelled the globe to hunt them to
extinction. I mean, the work has probably
got distracted by some yachts, you know, remember when that
happened? I guess kind of topical or old
news, whatever we do it all around here.
But that of course is what I have for the six gills shark.
We're going to jump right into the next one, which is going to
be the Starry Smooth Hound. Now, the Starry Smooth Hound is
a member of the hound shark family, which you may have
already known or may have inferred simply by the name.
They typically grow to be 140cm or 4.58 feet and have only been
found in the Northern Hemisphere.
They're not about that Southern Hemisphere life.
Sorry about that. They have been found around
Europe and Northern Africa, but they tend to stay out of the
tropics because they don't like it too hot down there.
These sharks tend to be Gray, brown, or even bluish with some
white spots about their body. They have a long, slender body
with fins that appear to have been thrown at a shark and just
kind of stuck where they landed. Their pectoral fins are placed
right below their head, their dorsal fin is about 1/4 way down
their back, and their caudal and anal fins take up the back half
of their stomach and their second dorsal fins sits above
their anal fins so it's nice and weird.
Now their tail is larger on the top than the bottom and they're
adorable and I love them. These sharks often spend time
around 200 meters or 660 feet deep.
They tend to like either sandy or gravel seabed.
So if you're decorating for a starry smooth hound, don't go
with carpet or hardwood. They're just not going to
appreciate it despite all your efforts.
Now on top of that, the starry smooth hound has a rather
limited diet that mostly consists of crustaceans such as
crabs and various lobsters. They are ovoviviparous, which
means that they will have eggs that hatch internally, and when
they grow some more, they will be born.
For these sharks, they can have about 7 to 15 pups that are
about a foot long or 30 centimeters.
For reference, a human baby is about 50 centimeters when
they're born. So we're bigger, which means we
win. So eat it.
These sharks are near threatened, which means that
they aren't endangered or threatened with extinction, but
they aren't thriving to the point of no concern.
But they're doing pretty all right for right now.
Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot known about these
sharks and there's not a lot on the Internet.
But as more comes out, I'm going to keep the shark here's updated
because this was a quick one. So I'm going to keep them on the
list a little bit. I'm going to kind of do a
revisit list as well, and I'll put them on there because I feel
like there's got to be more information out there about
these guys and I don't want to forget about it and think I've
already completed them. So I'm going to look back in a
little while and hopefully have some more information for you
guys there. Now, of course, that means that
we've already gotten to our last shark.
And you guys may be thinking, well, this episode was a little
bit shorter, I guess. But don't worry because we've
come to the long-awaited and one that I was very excited to
research the black tip Reef shark.
Now these are easily one of my favorite sharks and I 100% blame
the Baltimore Aquarium and their black tip Reef exhibit.
How dare you get rid of what was formerly just a lagoon full of
rays to then make it this beautiful reef that houses so
many black tipped reef sharks and so many beautiful things.
The centerpiece of the aquarium is the black tipped reef.
They have various rays, quite a few black tipped reef sharks, 3
zebra sharks, a wobegong, and a variety of other fish.
They also used to have a sea turtle named Calypso, but she
unfortunately passed a few years ago and Oh my God was she
beautiful. May she rest in peace.
But of course we have another sea turtle behind the scenes.
Their name is Kai and I believe there are plans to introduce
them to the exhibit in the future, but I'm not entirely
positive. I have reached out to the
Baltimore Aquarium a couple times regarding this and have
not received an answer, and whenever I'm there I forget to
ask. So I will probably do that again
and maybe update you guys if I remember to do it.
Sorry had to geek out there real quick, but the black tip reef
shark is a member of the Requiem shark family which includes the
lemon and bull sharks as well as the white tip reef shark.
Now these sharks were first discovered on an 18171820
expedition after it was caught off the coast of New Guinea.
These sharks have been found in a wide range of areas including
South Africa, Madagascar, Adaman Islands.
I don't know why I always struggle with that one.
Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Indonesia, the Philippines,
China, Hawaii, Japan, the Marshall Islands, Gilbert
Islands and Society Islands. Now, I do believe I saw juvenile
black tip reef sharks in the Galapagos Islands, but it was
dark and I'm not positive on that.
And it was also 10 years ago. So, you know, memory tends to
fade a little bit as time goes on.
Also, that means that I graduated high school 10 years
ago and that fact just simply hurts my soul.
For those of you that have not graduated 10 years ago, just
wait. It feels very weird when you get
to this point, but that is a total digression.
Now these sharks are about 1.6 to 1.8 meters long, or 5.2 to
5.9 feet. Although some individuals can
reach lengths of two meters or 6.6 feet.
They're often used as a good basis for what the average shark
length is, as many people know of the big ones such as great
whites, tigers, threshers and hammer heads that tend to grow
to be about four meters or 13 feet or larger.
But most sharks tend to be around the size of a black tip
reef shark. Now they are Gray in color with
black tips on their fins, hence the name.
And they have a rounder face with eyes that sit close to
their nose. Their face is also kind of like
flat, like vertically. So it kind of looks like the
front of their head was squished a little bit and pulled out.
But it's very smooth. It's you got to see them.
They're, they're beautiful. Now their fins are smaller with
a pair of pectoral fins, anal fins and caudal fins.
They also have dorsal fin that sits pretty much at the center
of their back. Now their bodies are slender and
they move to the water rather gracefully unless they're
hunting, then they move rather frantically.
Now the black to reef shark often travels in groups, as do
many reef sharks and will hunt in groups as well as it appears
to give them more confidence because you know, sometimes you
just be timid. Now there are one of the most
abundant apex predators among reefs and have one of the
largest variety of diets I've seen since doing this podcast,
so buckle in. Might take a minute or two, but
they mostly eat fish found around the reef such as mullet,
grunters, groupers, jacks, wrasses, surgeonfish, mojaras,
smelt, whitings, octopi, squid, cuttlefish, mantis shrimp, other
shrimp. And they'll eat smaller sharks
and rays. But around Australia they'll
also eat sea snakes and around the Palmyra Atoll, they will
also target seabirds. Now you may think that wasn't
too long, but we're not done yet because they've also found
random things in their stomach that include turtle, grass,
algae, coral, bryozoa, hydrozoa stones and rats.
How in the world they're eating rats, I don't know, but that one
really threw me off. But that's just the name of a
few of the things that they eat now around India.
The black tip reef shark will force its prey closer to shore,
making for easier eating. Of course, when they get further
in, they can hang out a little bit, but the animals that
they're hunting tend to panic as they get closer to the shore,
forcing them back towards the sharks.
Now, these sharks are highly curious, and we'll investigate
divers if they're splashing water around or banging metal
equipment against hard objects. But they don't see color very
well because, you know, they're just cool like that.
They're social justice warriors. We love it.
But their eyes have evolved to see movement rather well.
So what they lack in color, they make up for in movement.
They can identify small objects about 5 to 10 feet away from
them, which doesn't really sound that impressive because, you
know, we tend to be think we can see a lot further.
But truthfully, we can't really see anything underwater.
So they got us beat. Even with goggles, we can't see
that far because water tends to be pretty dense and block light
at certain distances. So everything just kind of is
blue, you know, which I recently realized.
Oh, wait, that's probably where out of the blue came from
because wouldn't that make sense, how things just kind of
appear? But no, I was wrong, actually.
Out of the blue comes from a saying from the 1800s, a bolt
out of the blue because there was a random lightning strike on
a blue sky day. Apparently.
So yeah, I'm disappointed, but I'm going to make a petition to
change that because out of the blue sounds so much better when
related to the ocean. Anyway, this is we're getting
really off topic, but when it comes to mating, females will
typically have a line of males following them as they will
release chemicals into the water known as pheromones, and that
gets the males to come a little bit closer.
The males will often bite at the female around her fins or gills,
as many sharks tend to do while mating.
Now, black tip reef sharks are viviperous, which is one that we
have not used very often, which means they give birth.
So there's not really a whole lot of eggs or anything involved
there. It's just Mama and little baby
sharks. Now, they tend to be pregnant
for around 10:50 months and then travel to shallow water to give
birth to about two to five pups. So not the most we've heard
either, but that's not a huge gestation period.
So they can pump these guys out pretty quick.
Now, these pups then form large groups for protection and to
help with hunting because when you're a small shark, you need a
little help. And having a lot of little guys
with you makes hunting a bit easier and getting picked off a
lot less likely, especially the larger the group.
These sharks have a lot of human interaction as they spend time
close to shore and divers tend to like reefs.
Despite this, there have only been 21 bytes, with 11 being
unprovoked in 65 years of keeping track of the data, which
is staggeringly low numbers now. They are very timid around
humans and tend to flee rather than fight.
Now, I did find that incredibly interesting, especially since I
learned that in 1982, researchers initially thought
that the black tip reef shark closest relative was the nervous
shark. But in 1988, they added four
more sharks that were discovered to be closely related.
And in 1998 that expanded to 10. So for those of you a little bit
confused, yes, there is a shark called the nervous shark.
And I love that and get to learn a little bit more about that if
we do an episode on them. So, you know, just just saying,
the black tipped reef sharks are listed as vulnerable because
they are haunted for their liver oil, their fins and their meat,
but they're not considered to be in danger of overfishing or
considered commercially important really.
But it is possible to be overfished if the conditions are
not monitored and of course, if protections are raised.
You can see these sharks at many aquariums as they are smaller,
they reproduce pretty easily and they're relatively easy to care
for by staff, especially when compared to other sharks such as
the great white, which they've unsuccessfully kept in
captivity. So they just kind of keep having
to get rid of them or they end up dying, which isn't great.
But the black Terry sharks in quite a few.
But that is what I have for this episode.
I want to thank you all once again for the millionth time
probably for listening to this episode and all the other
episodes that you've listened to and hanging out, interacting
everything there. Follow along on the Instagram at
deep dives with sharks. Same thing for Twitch.
Also, if you want to come hang out and chat, send Adm anything
like that, you're more than welcome to do that.
I tend to run more polls and stuff on the Discord and over on
Instagram. But you know, thanks for
listening. Appreciate you guys.
Be kind to each other, be kind to yourselves as well.
If you stayed to the end, you're going to get a little mental
health. Pick me up, I guess.
I don't know, but just take care of yourselves.
Give yourself a little slack. Make 2025 incredible and I will
see you in the next one.