Basking shark
Cetorhinus maximus
— Where the name comes from
Cetorhinus is Greek for “sea-monster snout”, from kḗtos, whale or sea monster, and rhís, nose; maximus, Latin, “greatest”. In English it is the basking shark, for its habit of cruising lazily at the surface. It is the second largest fish in the world.
— Facts
- Group
- Fish · Actinopterygii · Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Mackerel sharks
- Habitat
- Temperate coastal and oceanic waters, at the surface
- Range
- Temperate seas worldwide
- Size
- 7–9 m, up to 12 m
- Diet
- Filter feeder — zooplankton
- Lifespan
- 30–50 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It filters up to two thousand tonnes of water an hour through enormous gill slits.
- 02
It swims slowly with its mouth open, chasing nothing, sieving out plankton.
- 03
In winter, when plankton is scarce, it disappears into deep water for months.
— What sets it apart
The basking shark is a giant that lives on almost nothing: it cruises slowly with its mouth open filtering zooplankton, and the metre-wide gape terrifies anyone who meets it, though it is entirely harmless. It was long believed to hibernate on the bottom in winter, because it vanished completely for months; we now know it instead makes vertical and horizontal migrations of thousands of kilometres, following the plankton into depths where nobody was looking.
