You're listening to deep dives of the Sharks the Shark Podcast
focused on shark species, shark safety both for you and the
sharks, and news in the past couple weeks.
Sit back, relax. It's time to take a dive.
Hello, and welcome back Shark. Here's to another episode of
Deep Dives with Sharks. I am the host here.
My name is Alex, and I appreciate your patience as
always. I'd also like to thank you all
for your feedback from the social media posts that I made.
I'm going to try to implement as many things as possible, but I
can't really promise that I'll get to do all of it, as some
things aren't entirely doable. A lot of things do depend on the
amount of time that I have, which is why I'll probably end
up going back and going over some of the older episodes in
the future to update information and just make sure that I
thoroughly went through that species.
Also, that's the time constraint is why I'm usually late, but
there are sometimes where the shark just doesn't have a whole
lot of info on it. So like the Carolina Hammerhead,
the only things that I could find on that were that they go
into bays and estuaries and the Carolinas that breed and pup, if
I remember correctly. So they really only got a tiny
shout out in the Hammerhead episode.
So sometimes there's just not a whole lot out there.
I will try to implement a lot of the things that you guys
mentioned and if you have any other ideas or things that you'd
like to see me do, feel free to hit me up on the socials, deep
dives with sharks on Instagram and on Twitter or X it is going
to be deep dive sharks. So real quick before we get into
the shark for this week, I do have a correction corner to go
over. I do want to issue a quick
apology as in the last episode I said that people who shark fin
are quote lame as hell and quote.
But this was because I've always looked at that issue through a
privileged lens and I've had other options for work and to
make a living. But I was listening to
Sharkpedia which I recommend all of you do.
They pointed out that some people in the world don't have
another option for protein or to make a living, so the alternate
is just starving. So now that I know that I would
like to adjust my statement to those who have a means and
options to make a living and doing something different and
still choose to participate in shark finning.
They're lame as hell, so I'll stand by that.
But I also did get a question from someone which I will say
that I would like to turn this into questions slash correction
corner. So if you guys have questions
you want me to answer on the podcast, feel free to once again
send them into any of my social media and I'll try to update
that on here. But one of my friends, recent
engaged man and recent new dad Austin, who asked if humans are
born with all their adult teeth packed in their face, do sharks
just have billions of teeth packed in their jaws?
And the answer is dependent on species and the type of tooth.
So the way that humans are born is that you have your gums and
then after a couple months you start growing in your teeth.
And then of course the years down the line, those baby teeth
start falling out and then your adult teeth come through and
take the place in the roots there and then poke through
everything like that. We we all have lost teeth
before. Most likely if you haven't it,
it's going to happen. But sharks are rather different.
They're born with their entire set of teeth off the jump and
then they have a couple sets of teeth behind that.
So that's where the rows of teeth come in and they kind of
have what's known as like a tooth conveyor belt.
So as a tooth falls out, a tooth just moves forward, once again
depending on the species. So like great whites, a tooth
will move forward, cookie cutters an entire row.
But from there, they just kind of keep growing teeth as their
life goes on. They have specialized cells that
will grow those teeth for them. So that way they can just keep
that tooth conveyor belt moving and get the teeth going forward.
But some sharks, like the cookie cutter shark will often swallow
the row of teeth they just lost to help get more calcium to
produce more teeth in the future since their diet isn't really
calcium rich. Now salt fish, which are
technically a type of ray, are interesting because their teeth
on their rostrum aren't replaceable.
So if a salt fish loses its tooth on its rostrum, it won't
regrow it, but it's all shark I believe can replace its teeth.
Now this is where it gets a little tricky and complicated.
So the short answer is that sharks grow teeth throughout
their whole life, but humans? They're born with the sets of
teeth that they will have. Now I'd like to add at the end
of this, a very load bearing I believe, because I look this all
up and I believe I have accurate information, but it also got
very technical and I'm not sure if I understood it completely.
So this is me trying to get the information out correctly, but
I'm also adding that maybe also look into it yourself a little
bit, just to be sure. But of course if someone does
know better, please let me know. I'll be more than happy to
update this in the Corrections corner.
Every corrections corner is going to be about teeth now I
swear. But a quick shout out to Shark
Pedia, Some of the information that I get is from them and I've
also been binging their podcasts.
I'm absolutely hooked. It's amazing.
And that's where I learned that cookie cutter sharks tend to eat
their teeth. So that's a nice little fun
fact, but on to the shark for this week.
Now this one was probably one of the most requested sharks I've
had ever since I started putting those up on the podcast
episodes. Pretty much almost every episode
has this shark and also it's been sent to my DMS on the
social media. But we're going to go over the
Greenland shark. So I think this one got
recommended probably, I think it got to the double digits.
It was probably at least 10/15/20, maybe 30 times.
It was so many. But this one, they're also known
as the Gray shark, which there are quite a few of those.
I feel like every shark I go over.
Their other nickname is the Gray shark.
It's also known as the Gary shark.
And in the Greenlandic language, which I don't know how to
pronounce the name of the Greenlandic language because I'm
not going to try, because I'm going to try to say the name of
it in Greenlandic, which I'm probably going to mess up.
And I really do apologize, but it's the Equallusak, it's
EQALUSSUAQ. There's a lot of QS in there,
and I do not know how to pronounce AQ after an A, so I
apologize. But Greenland sharks are closely
related to Pacific and Southern Sleeper Sharks, and the three of
them are often misidentified as each other.
They're rather large, growing the sizes of 2.4 to 7 meters or
7.9 to 23 feet long, which is quite a range, and they weigh
around 400 to 1400 KG or 880 to 3090 pounds.
They typically are found in frigid waters of the Arctic and
tend to spend time around the northern Atlantic, around
Canada, northern Europe, and of course found around Greenland.
But they've been found in a lot of weird places, including deep
in the ocean off the coast of North Carolina, and one was in
the Gulf of Mexico, which I assume it just wanted to tan,
although it was rather deep. But Speaking of that color, they
are usually pale Gray or brownish black with an
occasional spots or darker stripe along their back.
They are rather round and have short rounded snout as well as
very small fins. Their eyes and gill slits are
also rather small, so big body, small everything else.
They typically reside between the surface and 1500 meters or
4900 feet depending on the temperature of the water.
So the ones that are further South are rather deep.
The ones in the freezing waters tend to be closer to the
surface. The sharks migrate frequently,
but instead of traveling from one location to another, it's
more of a migration between depths as the temperatures and
food source changes. And Speaking of food, they do
have an interesting variety of food that you probably would be
surprised about unless you yourself are a Greenland shark
or know more about them. They eat mostly fish, but also
consume smaller sharks, seals, skate eels, herring, flounder,
lumpfish, cod and others. Their stomach contents have
shown that these sharks are active hunters despite only
moving around 1.22 kilometers or an hour or .76 miles an hour
with bursts up to 2.6 kilometers per hour or 1.6 mph.
So they are flying. Researchers have found reindeer,
moose and seals in their stomachs and believe that since
these animals all swim faster than the Greenland shark, these
sharks must be ambushed. Predators catching seals while
sleeping and moose and reindeer while taking a rest while
swimming. They also did find an entire
reindeer in the stomach of a Greenland shark.
The Greenland shark is able to sneak up on prey by blending
into the ocean around them and not creating a lot of
disturbance in the water. Through their slow movement,
they're also able to create a lot of suction when opening
their buccal cavity, which from what I understood is essentially
just their mouth and beginning of their throat.
Once again, there's a lot of technical terms in here that are
scientific and I once again and not really a scientist, I am
more of a fan of sharks that made this.
But when they open up their mouth and get that suction
going, that helps to stop prey from escaping.
So it's sort of like a tractor beam.
They did find that entire reindeer in the stomach, which
is what gave them that theory that they get the the suction
there and that's how the sharks hunt since it has not been
observed. Now, Greenland sharks are
believed to be the longest living vertebrate on Earth, as
their lifespan is believed to be around 300 to 500 years.
Now, researchers are able to use radiocarbon dating of the
crystals in the lens of the shark's eyes to determine their
age, and in 2016 a specimen was dated to be 392 ± 120 years old,
which is still insanely old. So to break that down a little
bit, they believe that the shark was born between fifteen O 4 and
1744, which would put it older than the United States which
claimed independence in 1776. But if you base America's age
off of certain individuals founded it in 1492.
Then discovery occurred 12 years before the shark was born.
If its birth date is 15 O four is more accurate than 1744.
So the way that carbon dating the plus or minus gives that 120
years on either, and I believe so.
Once again, not very technical on this, but these sharks also
have a very interesting parasite which is a wild sentence to
write. The copepod Omato Koteia
elongate, someone correct me, is found on the eye of Greenland
sharks and will eat away causing the shark to become blind.
These sharks do mostly rely on smell and sound to hunt, so
losing their eyesight does not hinder them.
As the majority of the species have these parasites.
They are also found in very low light areas, so not having
eyesight probably was part of the package from the go.
It is believed that these parasites may be bioluminescent,
which means that they glow at night and they might help lure
prey in for the shark so they can eat.
Although that has not been proven, there's a lot of
theories about these sharks. Researchers also believe that
these sharks reach reproductive maturity when they are 150 years
old, and efforts to protect these sharks is needed since it
takes them so long to mature, thus putting the population at
risk. These sharks have some
adaptations to help them survive, such as two nitrogenous
compounds that help increase buoyancy as well as adapt to the
breakdown caused by deep water pressure and urea.
They also possess three types of hemoglobin in their blood to
help slow the use of oxygen, helping with the longevity,
especially living in lower oxygen depths and temperatures.
The screen the skin of Greenland sharks is toxic to consume and
has caused sled dogs who consumed it to have trouble
standing and performing other duties.
There are ways to treat it and it will detoxify it, but it can
involve boiling, burying it and leaving it for weeks to months
to be detoxified, and that's if you're trying to consume the
skin. Greenland sharks also have a
strong position in Inuit legend due to their high urea content
in their skin and their size. One such legend is that the an
old woman washed her hair in urine, which at the time was a
very common cure to head lice. Thank God we have other methods
now, but the rag she used to dry her hair blew into the ocean,
becoming the first Greenland shark.
Another story is of Sedna, an Inuit legend, where her father
cut off her fingers and drowned her.
Not quite sure why, but each of her fingers became a different
creature of the sea. One such being the Greenland
shark, and I do believe another one was one of the seals, but it
it goes on through there but it's very violent and messed up.
But we were not there. They have cemented themselves as
the apex predator of the Arctic Ocean.
Although they are currently listed as vulnerable because of
bycatch, being hunted for their oils and the amount of time it
takes them to become mature and able to repopulate Their numbers
can go down much quicker than they can go back up, but that is
what I have for the shark portion of the podcast.
Of course send any questions, anything like that, any
suggestions over to the social media and I can answer it there
or put it in a future episode as well.
Now moving on to shark safety, for this week we simply went
over how to help sharks in your everyday life, so it's a little
bit different than what we normally do.
This was brought to us by World of Sharks, by the Save Our Seas
foundations and also another great podcast to look up is
World of Shark There, it's a great one too.
But I typically go over what to do if you're on the beach and
this happens, That happens. How to protect sharks?
How to protect yourselves? But I really always hear about
how we can do stuff in our everyday life to protect sharks
and then never really knew what to do.
And then by the time it'd be ready for me to actually look
into it, my ADHD would kick in and I'd forget.
So I decided instead of just telling you guys all that just
do stuff and change stuff, that I'll actually do the research
and give you the suggestions to help support sharks no matter
where you live. So the 1st way that you can help
sharks revolves around by catch and by catch is when fisheries
are going for a certain fish but end up with other fish such as
sharks in their Nets which ends up killing the shark.
Of course I'm not going to tell you to manage your by catch
because if you're rod or real fishing, you aren't really going
to get a shark as by catch. And if you live in a landlocked
area and you don't fish at all, but you can still be
contributing to it without realizing.
So fish such as tuna and swordfish create a lot of
bycatch and these can be bought in canned forms in many grocery
stores. A way to help sharks is to look
at the can before you buy and find brands that say sustainably
caught and for the Blue fish label by the Marine Stewardship
Council that certifies the fish was in fact sustainably caught.
This helps to maintain fish populations as well as limit the
amount of sharks lost due to by catch.
There's also shark meat in markets that is disguised as
other types of meat, such as rock, flake or husk.
Meat can be shark. In actuality, these types of
meats could be spiny dogfish or even scalloped hammerhead or
short fin Mako. It does get tricky though, as
living in Maryland and going out on the Chesapeake Bay I've gone
and caught rockfish so it wasn't uncommon to see rockfish meat
there, so of course rockfish aren't actually sharks.
There are some meats that will be classified as that though, so
it's always OK to ask how it was caught and if it looks suspect
just by something else. There's no need to harass or
argue. The vendor is they might just
work there and they weren't part of catching or filleting the
fish, so they really don't know. So you can ask your questions.
If they don't really have a good answer, they don't know
themselves, just pick something different.
Worst case scenario. Now shark bits can also be found
in certain cosmetics, so be sure to check your products that use
squalene or squalene, which is interesting.
So it's SQUALENE or SQUALANEA product from shark liver oil as
one of the ingredients. Sharks aren't only haunted for
their meat, they're also haunted for cosmetics and similar
products. With this as well, you can reach
out to your legislators. Of course, if you live in a
landlocked area, it's rather easy to not overfish the sharks
in your state or country, since you may not have a fishing
industry that target sharks really at all, or any fish for
that matter. But you can still reach out to
politicians in Congress, in the US, or the equivalent in your
country to back sustainable fisheries and create
restrictions around overfishing. This doesn't necessarily mean to
go as heavy as a shark finning ban, which many countries have
done as this was helpful, but there still is need for seafood,
so banning fishing all together isn't really an option.
I'll admit, I do love seafood, but I want to be able to
continue to eat seafood throughout the rest of my life
and not think back on the times that I could eat a fish.
So we need governmental help to put some regulations out there
to protect our oceans, to allow the population to flourish and
be around for years to come. Now this one is a huge one.
This one is to limit your carbon footprint.
This pretty much says to try to limit the amount of impact you
have on the environment. Bike or walk instead of taking a
car. Recycle.
When possible, try to use less water and electricity.
Live by the motto Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Of course it's easier for some people than others.
Currently it takes me to get to work about 20 minutes by car and
by bus. It would take me an hour 15
because there isn't a route from my apartment to where I work and
I don't have a train option and walking would take about 5
hours. So there's really a better
option by car for now. I might be switching jobs, but
whatever. But I'm not going to argue to
ban cars because that's not a realistic option.
Of course we need cars, but if there's a way that you can walk
somewhere, or if you can get around biking or doing something
similar, that's a good option too.
Yeah, biking is not an option for my current job either.
It's I got to go on a highway. It's a problem, but it's going
to be a big fight to take up and seems like it doesn't really
matter what one person does, but the more people that are doing
it makes a bigger impact. So of course you might get a
little bit discouraged, but do what you can and don't feel
guilty for what you cannot. We've all accidentally littered
before when we went took a piece of trash we were going to throw
away and put it into the water or throw it out the car window
or something like that. We've all made that mistake and
we've all accidentally littered, so just don't throw trash out of
your car. Recycle when possible, check
labels for sustainable practices and try not to use products that
have shark bits in them. So that's really all you got to
do. Of course, if you're even trying
in the 1st place, that's a huge step because of course we're
fighting this uphill battle. But every little bit counts and
that is what I have for the shark safety bit for this week.
Little bit quicker, but there's not a whole lot that we can do
in our everyday life other than just those things mentioned
because those are the biggest ways that sharks are caught and
haunted for. So of course, if we limit those,
that will also limit the amount of sharks that go missing in the
amount of populations that we have to list as extinct.
But moving into shark news, I do have two nice stories for you
guys this week. Well, I'd say they're both
interesting at least, but one's one's a little bit of a roller
coaster, but we'll get into that.
The first one that I have is that 6 bull sharks inadvertently
made made their home on an Australian golf course and then
they vanished. And this was reported by CNN.
So this is the one that's a roller coaster, so strap in.
But this is definitely worth a read.
And look, the golf course is landlocked but has some lakes
across the course and after some heavy rains and flooding in 1990
one 9596 and 2013, there was AI always want to say, land bridge.
But that's the opposite thing. If your guys are history buffs,
you know that the land bridge was that bit from Russia to
Alaska. Anyway, I could go on about that
forever. But anyway, it was more of like
a river. It created a a water bridge from
the lake to the river nearby. Over that time 6 juvenile bull
sharks had swam into the lake and did not leave before the way
back to the river dried up. Now there had been rumors that
sharks have been spotted, but nobody really believed them
until someone got a video that they called terrible.
But it was actually a great image of the shark I could
identify that was a bull shark right from that video.
It was taken a way long time back, but that quality it holds
up. So from there, the Golf Club
then embraced its new shark mascots and added a shark to
their logo, as well as renaming their youth program as the
Junior Shark Academy, which I absolutely love.
This is the way that you should do it.
They also did put up signs, let people know, and they forbid
swimming, as well as not letting anyone go into the lake to die
for golf balls because there's bull sharks there.
They it's kind of the same thing I've said in previous safety
segments where. The easiest way to not get bit
by a shark is don't go in the water.
And if you know there's six bull sharks in a lake, maybe don't
jump into the lake. It's just an idea.
But unfortunately since then these sharks have gone missing.
Only two were found dead. One was floating at the surface
after a large storm which they assumed that one killed it and
then one was just illegally fished, which is rather
upsetting. But they believe that after a
large storm in 2013 that created more flooding, the sharks
returned to the river or they were killed by the storm.
Unfortunately now they do not believe that these sharks could
have died in natural ways if they were killed, but more
recent flooding officials hope that this brings more sharks
into the lake. They they do have plans to
eventually fill in that lake, although they will move all
residents, any fish or sharks to redo the course.
And they'll remove them, relocate them.
So that way they're not just going to kill a shark, which is
I think, awesome, but they're hoping that more sharks end up
in the lakes. That way they can have that nice
image once again. But yeah, I thought that was
kind of neat, especially because it was a freshwater lake and it
goes to show how adaptable bull sharks are they they're kind of
tanks of the ocean. It's rather nuts, but we do have
another story. That is a new species of shark
discovered in Mammoth Cave, and this is from Fox 56 in Kentucky.
So new shark just dropped kind of Researchers digging in the
Saint Genevieve Formation layer of rock were able to find the
Petal tooth shark fossil. Mammoth Cave National Park has
been turning up many fossil records recently as researchers
and paleontologists have had more access to the park and its
resources. They named the specific species
after a guide at the park who has helped to find many fossils
since the program began in 2019. Now, this is an amazing
archaeological, archaeological discovery and hopefully will be
the first of many more to come. Of course, some of you may be
wondering how fish fossils ended up in landlocked areas, and
that's simply because of how the Earth has shifted over the
billions of years it's been around.
I mentioned in the Megalodon episode that they're known
breeding grounds were on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and
Central Florida, both of which are near the Atlantic Ocean, but
both are about an hour drive or more from the water.
Florida also has the Gulf of Mexico, and Maryland has the
Chesapeake Bay, but both are still about an hour anywhere
from where the Megalodon used to breed.
So as the Earth shifted, waterways became land, land
became water, and different fossils get in different places.
But that is what I had for the new segment of this episode and
that's pretty much it for this episode.
So thank you all for listening. Of course, follow along on the
social media. If you have any questions, any
comments, any concerns, send them in to me.
And of course, I will see you guys in the next one.
Take care.