Graceful Shark

The graceful shark or Queensland shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchoides) is a species of requiem shark, family Carcharhinidae, found in the tropical Indo-Pacific from the Gulf of Aden to northern Australia. It is a midwater species that has been recorded to a depth of 50 m (160 ft). A stoutly built shark growing up to 1.7 m (5.6 ft) long, the graceful shark has a short, wedge-shaped snout, large, sickle-shaped pectoral fins and first dorsal fin, and black tips on most fins.

Graceful sharks prey mainly on bony fishes, and to a much lesser extent on cephalopods and crustaceans. It is viviparous, with females bearing litters of up to nine pups following a 9–10 month gestation period. Off northern Australia, birthing occurs in January and February, with mating shortly after. This species is potentially dangerous, but has not been implicated in any attacks. It is caught incidentally by commercial fisheries throughout its range for meat, fins, and liver oil, though specific information is lacking. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed it under Near Threatened.

Read more about Graceful Shark:  Taxonomy and Phylogeny, Distribution and Habitat, Description, Biology and Ecology, Human Interactions

Famous quotes containing the words graceful and/or shark:

    “The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of the snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits like theirs. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, expensive races,—race living at the expense of race.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning.”
    —Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)