Silky Shark
Carcharhinus falciformis
The silky shark, a requiem shark named for the smooth feel of its skin, also goes by names such as blackspot, gray whaler, olive, ridgeback, sickle, and sickle silk shark. It ranks among the most plentiful sharks of the open ocean and is found in tropical waters worldwide. Mobile and migratory, it most often keeps to the edge of the continental shelf down to about 50 m (164 ft).
Family
Carcharhinidae
Avg Size
220-300 cm
Habitat
The silky shark is found in marine waters warmer than 23 degrees Celsius (73 degrees Fahrenheit) around the world. In the Atlantic it ranges from Massachusetts to Spain in the north and from southern Brazil to northern Angola in the south, including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. In the Mediterranean it was first noted in the Alboran Sea and later in Algerian waters, the Gulf of Gabes off Tunisia, and most recently the Ligurian Sea. It is present throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far south as Mozambique in the west and Western Australia in the east, and includes the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Behaviour
An opportunistic hunter, the silky shark preys mainly on bony fish drawn from every level of the water column, among them tuna, mackerel, sardines, mullets, groupers, snappers, mackerel scads, sea chubs, sea catfish, eels, lanternfishes, filefishes, triggerfishes, and porcupinefishes. It will also take squid, paper nautilus, and swimming crabs, and fossil evidence suggests it scavenged whale carcasses. Rich feeding can draw silky sharks together in large numbers; one documented aggregation in the Pacific herded a school of small fish into a tight bait ball against the surface before the sharks devoured the lot.
