Smooth Hammerhead

Fascinating facts about the Smooth Hammerhead

• The smooth hammerhead can grow as long as a city bus, reaching a maximum recorded length of 5 m (16 ft) and weighing up to 400 kg (880 lb). Its body is streamlined and its cephalofoil spans 26-29% of that length, giving it a wide, short "hammer". These dimensions place it just behind the great hammerhead as the second-largest hammerhead species.
• During summer migrations the smooth hammerhead forms massive schools, sometimes numbering in the hundreds to thousands, as it chases cooler water toward the poles. Off South Africa, researchers have counted schools of over a hundred juveniles under 1.5 m (4.9 ft) long, while off California sightings have reported thousands of individuals together. Such aggregations reveal the species' reliance on temperature cues.
• Female smooth hammerheads give birth to producing 20-50 pups after a 10-11-month gestation. Newborns measure 50-61 cm (20-24 in) and the mothers reach sexual maturity at 2.7 m (8.9 ft) for females and 2.1-2.5 m (6.9-8.2 ft) for males, depending on location.
• The smooth hammerhead is listed as Vulnerable (VU) by the IUCN, and fisheries have taken a heavy toll: fewer than 10 were caught each year in KwaZulu-Natal nets from 1978-1990, yet in New South Wales nets they made up 50% of the 4,715 sharks captured between 1972-1990. In Costa Rica, hammerhead numbers have dropped around 90% despite recent bans, underscoring how regional over-fishing can rapidly erode populations even for a species that was once common.
• Stingrays make up a big part of the smooth hammerhead's menu, and the sharks often end up with a mouth full of the prey's venomous barbs. One examined specimen carried 95 stingray spines lodged in and around its jaws.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

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