Greenland Sharks in The Shark Handbook by Dr Skomal Avoid Arctic Thaw

Summary: Greenland Sharks in the 2008 book, The Shark Handbook: The Essential Guide for Understanding the Sharks of the World by Dr Greg Skomal, avoid Arctic thaw.

"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..

Greenland-shark pups live-birth in head to anal-finless tail body lengths of 3.1 feet (0.94488 meters) and in litters of no more than 10; Greenland shark pup, illustrated by Nekoama, Ottawa-based Canadian animator, artist, cartoonist, and professional doodler; Nekoama draws Sharkpups!, cute shark puppies and creates the popular webcomic Lil Char and the Gang (2017 – ) as well as the Sharkpup! Round Friend Plush store, which debuted in 2021: The Art of Ama, via Facebook Dec. 20, 2018

Greenland Sharks in the 2008 book, The Shark Handbook: The Essential Guide for Understanding the Sharks of the World for Cider Mill Press (Kennebunkport, Maine) by Dr Greg Skomal, avoid Arctic thaw.

It behooves Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus, from Latin somniosus [Latin somnium, "sleep"], "sleepy"; mīcrocephalus [Greek μῑκροκέφᾰλος, from μικρός κέφᾰλος], "small-headed") to be in deep ocean water. They concentrate upon the cold, dark depths of the polar-Arctic Ocean and of the temperate North-Atlantic Ocean waters that respectively contain northernmost and southernmost coastal Greenland. Such watery habitats as bays, coastal areas, continental and island shelves and slopes, deep waters, fjords and inlets domicile such Somniosidae family members as Greenland sharks.

Greenland sharks, as Somniosidae (Latin somnium, "sleep"; Greek -ίδης, "of/pertaining" or -ειδή, "appearing/resembling" via Latin -idæ) sleeper-shark family members, enter and exit their habitats sleepishly slow.

Sleeper sharks such as Greenland sharks favor bottom-dwelling habitats perhaps as much as, perhaps more than surface waters even as the latter perhaps furnishes most prey.

The Squaliformes (Latin squalus, "shark"; -fōrmis, "-shaped") dogfish-order member goes from 3,000- to 7,000-foot (914,4- to 2,133.6-meter) depths to surface waters even as scents guide them. Cryptic coloration; cutting, grasping teeth; electro-sensory capabilities; suctorial lips; stealth help these large-size, live-prey ambushers harvest bird, bony-fish, invertebrate, other-shark, seal and other marine-mammal, ray prey. Front- to rear-end maximum 20-foot, 20-plus-foot (6.096-, 6.096-plus-meter) lengths involve immense noses identifying prey scents even as copepods (Greek κώπη ποδός, "handle foot/leg") inflict near/total blindness.

The Shark Handbook by Dr. Skomal judges Ommatokoita elongata [Greek ομματος κοίτος, "eye bed/lying-in-wait"; Latin ēlongāta, "elongated/prolonged/protracted/stretched") jeopardizing Greenland sharks, not Arctic thaw jeopardizing deep-water temperatures.

Arctic thaw keeps historically near-freezing to freezing air, land, water temperatures above freezing even as it no longer kindles near-freezing to freezing Greenland shark-keepsaking ocean depths.

Greenland sharks log life expectancies of more than 100 years even as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) locates them among near-threatened sea-world lodgers. They manifest the reproduction mode maintaining soon-to-be-litter eggs within maternal bodies even as Greenland-shark mothers-to-be manage ovoviviparously (Latin ōvum, "egg"; vīvus, "alive/life/living"; pariō, parere, "I/to beget/birth/generate/produce/spawn"). Each live-birthed litter numbers no more than 10 Greenland-shark pups, each of whom net live-birth head to anal-finless tail body lengths at 3.1 feet (0.94488 meters).

The Shark Handbook by Dr. Skomal offers nothing about Arctic thaw obstructing Greenland sharks even as commercial fisheries obstruct Greenland-shark occurrences by overfishing such non-target fishes.

Fifty-eight-foot- (20-meter-) long sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) and 85-foot (30-meter) fin whales (Balaenoptera musculus) perhaps prey upon 37- to 64-foot (11.2776- to 19.5072-meter) petiter Greenland sharks.

Greenland sharks qualify as apex (Latin apex, "point/summit/tip") predators even as no one other than cannibalism-quickened Greenland sharks or human predators regularly quest them. Inuit (Ihukitut ᐃᓄᐃᑦ, "the people") Greenlanders regard Greenland sharks as poisonous-fleshed animals rendering dogs drunk and paralyzed even as they retrieve Greenland-shark oil-, vitamin A-rich livers. Dr. Gregory Skomal says nothing about by what means, how many and how often Inuit Greenlanders select Greenland sharks even as he states nothing about disposal.

The Shark Handbook by Dr. Skomal treats Greenland sharks as threatened by commercial fisheries overfishing; perhaps, perhaps not, by Inuit Greenlanders; presumably not by Arctic thaw.

Dr. Greg Skomal's fascination with sharks traces to childhood film and television heroes Jacques-Yves Cousteau (June 11, 1910-June 25, 1997), French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker, auto and co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), called the Aqua-Lung self-contained under breathing apparatus (SCUBA), and fictitious shark biologist Matt Hooper in the 1975 American thriller, Jaws, directed by American filmmaker Steven Allan Spielberg (born Dec. 18, 1946) and based on the same-named 1974 novel by American author Peter Bradford Benchley (May 8, 1940-Feb. 11, 2006): Cider Mill Press Book Publishers, via Facebook April 26, 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:

Greenland-shark pups live-birth in head to anal-finless tail body lengths of 3.1 feet (0.94488 meters) and in litters of no more than 10; Greenland shark pup, illustrated by Nekoama, Ottawa-based Canadian animator, artist, cartoonist, and professional doodler; Nekoama draws Sharkpups!, cute shark puppies and creates the popular webcomic Lil Char and the Gang (2017 – ) as well as the Sharkpup! Round Friend Plush store, which debuted in 2021: The Art of Ama, via Facebook Dec. 20, 2018, @ https://www.facebook.com/nekoama/posts/1965217980439685/;
The Art of Ama, via Facebook Dec. 20, 2018, @ https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1965217980439685&set=a.1831692907125527;
The Art of Ama, via Facebook Dec. 20, 2018, @ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1965217980439685&id=1523421517952669&set=a.1831692907125527

Dr. Greg Skomal's fascination with sharks traces to childhood film and television heroes Jacques-Yves Cousteau (June 11, 1910-June 25, 1997), French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker, auto and co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), called the Aqua-Lung self-contained under breathing apparatus (SCUBA), and fictitious shark biologist Matt Hooper in the 1975 American thriller, Jaws, directed by American filmmaker Steven Allan Spielberg (born Dec. 18, 1946) and based on the same-named 1974 novel by American author Peter Bradford Benchley (May 8, 1940-Feb. 11, 2006): Cider Mill Press Book Publishers, via Facebook April 26, 2021, @ https://www.facebook.com/CiderMillPress/posts/1906192802887553/

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