Oceanic Whitetip Shark Profile
The white tip reef shark is one of the elegant hunters of the reef. A coyote in a family of wolves: smaller, faster, but no less predatory in its instincts.
But its larger namesake is a true monster, a fish that rarely spends time in the shallows, patrolling vast marine ranges with little to fear. This pelagic whitetip isn’t a sibling, but more of a cousin of the reef shark, and has an ominous history with people who’ve found themselves stranded in its habitat.
Oceanic Whitetip Shark Facts Overview
| Habitat: | Tropical and subtropical waters |
| Location: | Worldwide |
| Lifespan: | 25 years |
| Size: | Up to 4m (13 ft) long |
| Weight: | Up to 150 kg (330 lb) |
| Colour: | Grey-bronze on top, white beneath |
| Diet: | Bony fish and cephalopods |
| Predators: | Only humans |
| Top Speed: | 17 km/h (10 mph) |
| No. of Species: | 1 |
| Conservation Status: | Critically Endangered (IUCN) |
The oceanic whitetip is a much larger shark than the whitetip reef shark, and while the two share a family, they’re not the same genus.
Apart from the size, the major difference in appearance comes in the huge pectoral fins of the pelagic shark, used to generate lift on long ocean voyages where there is no discernible sea floor.
These are top predators, and notoriously aggressive in some contexts. One of the largest requiem sharks, they’re not fussy about diet and are thought to be opportunistic. This has led them into battle with some of the ocean’s most elusive and frightening monsters.
Interesting Oceanic Whitetip Shark Facts
1. They’re one of the largest Requiem sharks
The requiem sharks are diverse in their size, reflecting a range of niches over which they tend to dominate. The reef varieties make up a few species, but most are more pelagic, or open-ocean, travellers.
The 5m tiger shark is an exception to this. This is the second-largest predatory shark after the great white and patrols coastal waters. But the oceanic whitetip is second in size for this family, reaching up to around 4 m long.
This is a thick, powerful hunter and one that spends most of its time swimming in the surface waters of the deep, open expanse of tropical and subtropical seas. This means there isn’t a lot to rest on while they’re out there, so they have adapted to stay afloat with minimal effort.
2. They have huge pecs
The species name for this shark is longimanus which roughly translates to “long hand”, and it refers to the exaggerated pectoral fins on either side of the shark.
These are essentially wings, and the longer they are, the more lift they create, which is great when you need to stay afloat actively.
Sharks don’t have a swim bladder like bony fishes do, so they have a highly fatty liver to aid in buoyancy, but this only takes them so far. In general, sharks remain negatively buoyant, so to stay afloat they have to keep moving.
Moving takes energy, which is why the pelagic species have longer wings, reducing the amount of effort they have to put in, and conserving some of this energy. 1
3. They don’t need to ram
But many sharks in this family need to keep swimming, regardless of how small their fins are. This is how some species breathe – pushing into fresh, oxygenated water to keep a flow of O2 over their gills. This is called ram ventilation.
Other species, and this includes the oceanic whitetip, are able to pump water over their gills by “bobbing” like a goldfish (this is also what the goldfish is doing), a process known as buccal pumping.
4. They have teeth for gripping and cutting
When it’s time to feed, this shark has a range of tools affixed to its face, all of them deadly.
The lower jaw has thin, spine-like teeth that act as a fork, holding their prey in place. Then, the upper jaw is lined with wide, serrated teeth that act as the knife, allowing the thrashing motion of the shark to shear chunks of flesh off for swallowing.
This suggests a capability to eat more or less anything, from slippery little fishes to decomposing whale carcasses. And the reported diet of this shark seems to back this up.
They will mostly feed on open ocean cephalopods, but this is likely because they’re the easiest to catch. Other victims of this shark’s appetite include tuna, mackerel, barracuda, sea birds, sea turtles and crustaceans.
Its size, location and diet put it into competition with Silky sharks, another pelagic beauty, but it’s said that the whitetip’s aggression aids them in achieving dominance over the more passive competitor.
5. They sometimes breach
Oceanic whitetips are generally slow-moving but can flip out if the conditions are right. They have a slightly mysterious by very interesting range of behaviours that still need to be fully understood.
While they prefer to cruise about slowly in the upper few centimetres of the ocean, they have also been recorded at depths of up to a kilometre.
There’s not a lot to do in the middle of the ocean, especially if you’ve already had your fill of fish. Perhaps this is why they’ve been seen breaching out of the water at high speed, apparently from quite a depth.
Or it could be out of sheer terror for what’s beneath them. 2
6. They may fight giant squid
One oceanic whitetip has been found peppered in scars from the toothed tentacles of a giant squid. Usually, sharks and giant squid don’t cross over, so this is a bit peculiar, but there are a few hypotheses that immediately come to mind.
The exceptionally deep dive of one recorded whitetip certainly touches on giant squid territory, and these sharks are notorious lovers of calamari, but perhaps a more feasible explanation would be suggested by their habit of following pilot whales.
Pilot whales are the ocean’s more prolific squid suckers, so wherever they go, there’s squid to eat. But these whitetips have also been seen visiting the pilot whale’s close cousin, the sperm whale, and these are the world’s most prolific giant squid suckers.
Sperm whales often leave a trail of debris and tentacles closer to the surface after a hunt, and by nature of the cephalopod’s neural clusters, these tentacles may sometimes still be able to fight back against an opportunistic white tip.
Still, the truth remains a mystery and if it turns out that the sharks sometimes join the whales down there in the abyss, it would open a whole avenue of exciting research. 3
Oceanic Whitetip Shark Fact-File Summary
Scientific Classification
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Chondrichthyes |
| Order: | Carchariniformes |
| Family: | Carcharhinidae |
| Genus: | Carcharhinus |
| Species: | C. longimanus |
Fact Sources & References
- Bastiaan de Groot, “Buoyancy regulation in sharks”,.
- Yannis P Papastamatiou (2018), “Optimal swimming strategies and behavioral plasticity of oceanic whitetip sharks”, PubMed Central.
- Joshua Rapp Learn (2020), “This shark fought off a deep-sea squid, first-ever picture reveals”, National Geographic.