Greenland shark Home: shark
The Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) is an indigenous species along the Norwegian coast. This means that it “belongs here”, and that it has a native distribution in Norway. The Greenland shark is not normally found in Agder, but on occasion it gets lost and ends up here anyway – like the one found in the exhibition.
The Greenland shark can reach lengths of 5-7 m – it is thus larger than both the hammerhead and great white sharks! The average Greenland shark is about 3.5 metres long and weighs 300 kg.
The body is powerful and has dark brown to bluish black colouring, sometimes with transverse stripes or light dots. The Greenland shark has a relatively long snout, and a mouth with many sharp cutting teeth.
Sharks, unlike mammals, do not breathe with lungs as for example the harbour porpoise or humans. They “breathe” by pumping water through their gills, thus feeding oxygen into the blood stream. A few shark species have lost the ability to actively pump water through the gills and will therefore asphyxiate if standing still.
The Greenland shark mostly keeps to depths of 200-600 m, near soft bottoms.
Unlike the great white shark, which is a fast and supple fish, the Greenland shark is slow and saggy. Despite this, it catches large fish like cod, as well as seabirds and seals. Greenland shark stomachs have even been found to contain remains of whales, reindeer and horses – probably originating from drowned individuals.
The Greenland shark is physically capable of killing a human, but there are no confirmed cases where this has happened. Divers meeting Greenland sharks underwater have not reported any attacks, either.
Greenland shark fisheries have long traditions in Norway. In the beginning of the 18th and 19th centuries the Greenland shark was caught along the coast, but in the 20th century one had to move offshore to catch them. In the beginning the yields were large, but due to overfishing they became less and less. As today’s population is small, it is classified as Nearly Threatened (NT) on the Norwegian Red List.
The Greenland shark can become quite old – there are records of individuals at an age of more than 272 years! This shark grows very slowly and does not reach sexual maturity until an age of up to 100 years. This is also why getting the population numbers back up after overfishing takes so long.