Blacktip Reef Shark
We have 8 Blacktip Reef Sharks at SEA LIFE Porto! Some smaller, some bigger, some shier, other more terrorists, some skinnier, some more gluttons.
Did you know?
Blacktip Reef Sharks cannot stop swimming or ... they will sink.
Why?
Like most sharks when stopped, it cannot pump water to his gills in order to breathe. Therefore, it needs to force the entry of water through his mouth, so that it may pass through the gills and exit through the gill slits. And hit does so, by swimming endlessly.
Other interesting facts
- It is the black marks on the pectoral and dorsal fins that gives them the name black tips
- They swim fast and continuously
- It is a species particularly vulnerable to overfishing because their growth and reproduction is slow
- In our Ocean Tank, they coexist peacefully with hundreds of other fish, from the small Clown Triggerfish, up to the huge Common Sting Ray!
- Discover why our Black Tip Sharks pose no threat to man!
On the other end, due to the absence of a swim-bladder (kind of an internal "flotation device"), a hydrostatic organ that exists in other animals, it is hard for him to float. These two features are responsible for most sharks being constantly swimming, because if for some reason they stop, they’ll sink and/or die from asphyxiation.
However, some species have the ability to remain still and lying on the bottom of the ocean, like our Nurse Shark, inclusively inside spacey caves.