The Top Predator In The Ocean

Sharks are so awesome to me, they're so viscous and interest me so much. When I was younger I was obsessed with anything that had to do with sharks. Weather it was movies, shows about them, posters, stickers, and stuffed animals. All things to do with sharks. Sharks fascinate me, I have no idea why but they do. Even though I'm terrified of them and would be to scared to swim to far out into the ocean, I love them.

Shark have about 5 to seven gill splits that they breath out of. The scientific name for a shark is Selachimorpha. They can live anywhere from 20 – 30 years. Adult sharks can swim up to 8 km per hour. Sharks are known for killing anything in the ocean, also they are the top predator in the ocean waters.

Sharks are pretty good at keeping the food web really well balanced and healthy. They're pretty much at the top of the food chain in the ocean, anything below them they regulate the population of whatever it is they eat. There are way more than 465 species of sharks that we know of. That's crazy! Research shows that sharks are decreasing in population rapidly, which is effecting the ecosystem.

Sharks bones are made out of cartilage. It's a tissue that is a lot more flexible as well as lighter than bone. Sharks have two rows of razor sharp teeth. Shark lose their teeth quite a lot, but they always grow more back in.

A sharks skin is made up of scales. It acts almost like a skeleton, that way, the shark an move easier through the water. The scales also saves the shark energy while swimming though the ocean. The shark has a white belly and a darker top. That's because if a predator was looking down at the shark, his back would blend in with the dark ocean water. If a predator was looking up at a shark, he would still blend in the the sun shining through the ocean water.

Sharks can smell a drop of blood up to a mile away. Most kinds of sharks eat things like fish, crustaceans, marine mammals, even some other sharks, mollusks, plankton, krill.