Greenland Sharks Allure Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Summary: Twelve accomplishments of Greenland sharks allure Julia's mother, marine biologist Maura, in the fictional Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

"God talks to human beings through many vectors: through each other, through organized religion, through the great books of those religions, through wise people, through art and music and literature and poetry, but nowhere with such detail and grace and color and joy as through creation. When we destroy a species, when we destroy a special place, we're diminishing our capacity to sense the divine, understand who God is and what our own potential is." Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., April 19, 2023, Boston Park Plaza Hotel, Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts.

“And there’s many people out there who want us to move to the next planet already and I’m like, hang on, let’s not give up on this planet yet," William, Prince of Wales, July 31, 2023, Sorted Food food truck, London, England, United Kingdom.

illustration by British visual artist and writer Tom de Freston (born May 23, 1983) for Julia and the Shark (2021; page 129) by his wife, British playwright, poet and novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave (born March 29, 1990): Tom de Freston, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons

Twelve accomplishments of Greenland sharks allure Maura even as daughter Julia and she accompany father/husband Dan to Unst, Shetland, Scotland in the fictional Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

Marine biologist Maura began by basing university-level studies upon such whale species as beluga (Delphinapterus leucas), blue (Balaenoptera musculus), narwhal (Monodon mooceros), sperm (Physeter macrocephalus) whales. She concentrated upon one whale whose frequency calls higher than other species, whom he/she perhaps can hear even as other species cannot hear her/him. The afore-described whale, designated 52 Blue and 52-hertz whale, demonstrates blue whale-like Pacific-Ocean migration movements even as he/she displays August-December fin whale-like (Balaenoptera physalus) timing.

The 52-hertz whale Blue 52 expresses a 52-hertz frequency above the frequency patterns of blue and fin whales, respectively at 10 to 39 and 20 hertz.

Maura finished a long essay about 52-hertz whale 52 Blue even as she figures as her all-places, all-times favoritest animal sentient the Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus).

Julia guesses the Greenland shark as gaining a maximum-age life expectancy of 517 years even as Maura gauges the oldest-found, oldest-known Greenland shark as a 400-year-old. The Greenland shark has soft bones even as other sharks have hard bones that herald honing their age from annual-growing rings, like annual-aging, annual-growing tree rings. Crystals in their dark-adapted eyes instead indicate Greenland-shark ages even as parasites that inhabit the corneas of Greenland sharks induce their hosts' part-blind, albeit functional, eyesight.

Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave jubilates Greenland sharks for their blind, dark-adapted, low-light eyesight; maximum-age life expectancy; scientific name; and shark-atypical age-dating indicator.

Copepods (Greek κώπη ποδός, "handle foot/leg") known scientifically as Ommatokoita elongata [Greek ομματος κοίτος, "eye bed/lying-in-wait"; Latin elongata [ēlongō, "I prolong/protract"]), kindle other Greenland-shark survival senses.

Greenland sharks natively live in Arctic and North-Atlantic cold, dark, extreme-pressure ocean depths of 2,000-plus meters (6,561.68-plus feet), off Canada, coastal-eastern United States, Greenland and Iceland. They move carefully at slow speeds of 1.5 miles (2.41402 kilometers) per hour even as they manage slow growth at 1 centimeter (0.393701 inch) per year. They nevertheless number among their watery niches surface waters even as they successfully nab eels, fish, other sharks and such marine mammals as porpoises and seals.

Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave observes Greenland sharks obtaining, with parasitic occupants, northernmost depths occasioning slow orientations and, with sea-world prey, surface waters.

Greenland sharks present slow-aging, slow-growing, slow-moving profiles even as they possess greenish skin whose color protects them from predators and whose surface preserves scarred, seaweed-like roughness.

What qualifies as a hard smell queues from a Greenland shark whom Julia quests, for Maura, at 63-degrees-30’31.7”N 0-degrees-29’17.1”W, and whom the Norwegian Sea sometimes quarters. Beluga-whale Mila rescues Harbin-Chinese whale-worker Yang Yun from drowning in ice-cold, 20-foot- (6.096-meter-) deep aquarium water even as Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s Greenland shark reaches sinking Julia. The black-, glinting-eyed Greenland shark surfaces Julia even as he/she swims slowly as ice singing in Angela’s Glacier by Jordan Scott and Underland by Robert Macfarlane.

Greenland sharks in Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave team terrible odor-transmitting, extra-range water-transiting, black-glinted eye-twinkling; and damsel-in-distress nonprey-/nonpredatory-trawling perhaps with glacier/ice/iceberg tunes-talking achievements.

British wife-and-husband team of Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston collaborated as author and illustrator, respectively, on Julia and the Shark (2021): Shrewsbury Library, via Facebook Dec. 12, 2021

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Dedication

This post is dedicated to the memory of our beloved blue-eyed brother, Charles, who guided the creation of the Met Opera and Astronomy posts on Earth and Space News. We memorialized our brother in "Our Beloved Blue-Eyed Brother, Charles, With Whom We Are Well Pleased," published on Earth and Space News on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021, an anniversary of our beloved father's death.

Image credits:

illustration by British visual artist and writer Tom de Freston (born May 23, 1983) for Julia and the Shark (2021; page 129) by his wife, British playwright, poet and novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave (born March 29, 1990): Tom de Freston, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artwork_by_Tom_de_Freston_from_Julia_and_the_Shark_(2021).jpg

British wife-and-husband team of Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston collaborated as author and illustrator, respectively, on Julia and the Shark (2021): Shrewsbury Library, via Facebook Dec. 12, 2021, @ https://www.facebook.com/ShrewsLibraryUK/posts/4320295764747765/;
Shrewsbury Library, via Facebook Dec. 12, 2021, @ https://www.facebook.com/ShrewsLibraryUK/photos/a.338791176231597/4320295764747765/
Shrewsbury Library, via Facebook Dec. 12, 2021, @ https://www.facebook.com/ShrewsLibraryUK/photos/a.338791176231597/4320295764747765/

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