Spinner Shark

Fascinating facts about the Spinner Shark

• Spinner sharks give birth to just a handful of pups every other year, but each litter can range from three to twenty babies, with most mothers delivering seven to eleven. After a gestation that lasts 11-15 months, the embryos switch from yolk to a placental connection when they reach about 19 cm, making these sharks the viviparous species with the smallest ova relative to fully developed embryos.
• At birth spinner pups measure 60-77 cm, but they grow like rockets: newborns add about 30 cm each year, one-year-olds another 25 cm, adolescents 10 cm, and adults only 5 cm annually. The average adult reaches 2 m and 56 kg, yet the biggest individuals hit 3 m and 90 kg. Males mature at 1.3 m around age four to five, while females wait until 1.5-1.6 m at seven to eight years, and the species can live 15-20 years, meaning most of their life is spent growing rather than reproducing.
• Spinner sharks roam the warm waters of every ocean except the eastern Pacific, from the coast of Massachusetts down to Argentina, and from South Africa across to Japan. They can be found from the surface down to 100 m, but they prefer shallower zones under 30 m, often hanging out in bays, beaches and high-salinity estuaries where juveniles grow up. Their worldwide spread, combined with a penchant for coastal habitats, makes them especially exposed to fishing fleets that operate near shorelines.
• The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the spinner shark as Vulnerable worldwide, a status driven by its reliance on coastal waters that are heavily fished and degraded. Its meat, fins, liver oil and skin are prized by commercial and recreational fisheries, and because it is often mistaken for the blacktip shark, catches may be under-reported. This combination of high market demand and limited reproductive output means the species faces decline.
• A spinner shark will rocket straight up, twirl on its axis and burst out of the water, a leap that can send it soaring before it lands back on its back.

Sources

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

• Wikipedia

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