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Blue Shark

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Blue shark images (Prionace glauca) - stock photos, illustrations & facts showing this fast and elegant swimmer

Kingdom: Animalia > Phylum: Chordata > Class: Chondrichthyes > Order: Carcharhiniformes > Family: Carcharhinidae > Genus: Prionace > Species: P. glauca - Binomial name: Prionace glauca

The blue shark, Prionace glauca, is a pelagic shark that lives in the deep waters of temperate and tropical oceans. Blue sharks are known to migrate for very long distances, and Atlantic blue sharks migrate across the Atlantic Ocean each year, following the warm Gulf Stream waters. Blue sharks can often be found in large schools, which will be all male or all female, and mostly sharks of the same size.

The blue shark is a very beautiful shark, and it’s name comes from its indigo colored dorsal region, and its bright blue flanks. The ventral surface is white, and this contrast in colors provides camouflage in the open ocean. It has a sleek pointed shape, long pointed fins, and a pointed snout, all of which make it a fast and elegant swimmer, estimated to be up to 50 miles an hour when necessary, and is known to leap out of the water.

Blue sharks grow to be up to 12 feet or more, and typically weigh between 300 and 400 pounds. The heaviest recorded weight is 860 pounds. They eats a number of small prey, though squid appears to be the favorite food, especially when the squid are forming large breeding aggregations. Other prey include cuttlefish, octopus, lobster, krill, shrimp, crab, a large number of bony fishes such as anchovy, mackerel, herring and sardines, small sharks, and occasional sea birds. Blue sharks will also feed from gill nets and scavenge dead marine mammals such as whales.

Blue sharks, Prionace glauca, are considered dangerous, and there have been attacks on people and boats, particularly at the sites of shipwrecks where people are in the water. Some photographers dive in steel mesh shark suits as protection when they are photographing blue sharks. Others use a shark cage suspended from a boat, and film or photograph from inside the cage.

Blue sharks are preyed upon by California sea lions, Zalophus californianus, shortfin mako sharks, Isurus oxyrinchus, and white sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, and also by man. Blue sharks are the most heavily fished sharks in the world, with estimates that between ten and twenty million are slaughtered every year. They are caught for their fins for shark fin soup, as “game” fish, and are frequently killed in incidental catch by commercial swordfish and tuna fisheries. Their flesh is not usually used for food, but turned into fishmeal, the liver for oil, and the skin for leather.

The blue shark, Prionace glauca, is listed as "Near Threatened" by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
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