Shark Profile: Oceanic Whitetip Shark
Jaques Cousteau, the famous oceanographic researcher, once described the oceanic whitetip as “the most dangerous of all sharks”. Generally the other four sharks notorious for threatening humans ( the bullshark, the tiger, and the great white ) all habitat areas of the ocean closer to land. The oceanic whitetip, however, is more dangerous than the others.
In fact, oceanic whitetips are responsible for more fatal attacks on humans than any other shark species. If you are ever stranded at sea, you should be wary of this beast. Extremely aggressive when curious, the whitetips have been known to attack anything that it sees as prey on the open water.
During World War II, these sharks repeatedly attacked crew members of the torpedoed USS Indianapolis, tearing apart 60 to 80 sailors.
A similar incident occurred when a German submarine sank the Nova Scotia, a steamship carrying over a thousand people in the waters of South Africa. Only 192 passengers survived and many of the deaths were at the jaws of the whitetip.
Whitetips are large sharks with rounded dorsal fins and short blunt snouts. They can grow very large ( up to 11 - 13 feet ), but are generally in the range of 10 feet long. They often swim in the deep ocean with packs of silky sharks.
