4 Greatest Marine Threat A Shark Must Flee From

Sharks are seen to be the apex predators of the marine world. As the boss of its food chain, Sharks are believed to have no threat to worry about as they glide through the vast ocean - maybe they do.


Sharks at all stages of life, from egg to adult, can potentially be attacked. Attacks stems from animals like snails, whales, other sharks, and  so thing more. We are not excluded. Here are four major threats the sharks must battle off to survive.

The Shark's Eggs Feast

Some sharks give birth to live pups while other shark species lay eggs that many animals find highly nutritious. Obviously sharks have few defenses when they are still developing in an egg and this opens them up to predation by animals as varied as the snail and the baboon. David Cox and Thomas Koob describe their study of shark eggs in their paper “Predation on elasmobranch eggs” published in a 1993 edition of Environmental Biology of Fishes. The duo studied shark eggs from museums and eggs they incubated in the wild – in both cases they frequently found bore holes in the eggs. Their conclusion was that marine snails were preying upon the shark eggs. Further, the BBC writes on their Wild Africa page in “Baboons eating shark eggs” that baboons in Cape Peninsula National Park will forage for shark eggs at low tide.

A Kingdom Divided Against Itself

Occasionally larger sharks will eat their smaller brethren. According to the “Biological Profiles” page on the Ichthyology at the Florida Museum of Natural History website, the remains of nurse sharks have been found in the stomachs of lemon sharks and tiger sharks. Meanwhile, the small eye hammerhead, which reaches a size of 98 cm (38.6in) as an adult, is sometimes eaten by bull sharks and other hammerheads. The bull shark, a true apex predator, does not often have natural predators however it has been known to fall prey to tiger sharks, sandbar sharks, and other bull sharks.

capture of this bitten shark indicates of a larger predator

Whale Attacks on Sharks

The great white is perhaps the most well known of all shark species and it truly deserves its reputation as an efficient predator. However even the great white is susceptible to attack. The Florida Museum of Natural History’s 1997 report “Peter Pyle’s First Hand Account of Killer Whale/ White Shark Encounter” describes how an orca took down a great white. Biologist Peter Pyle believes the killing may have been for food, or to protect the orca’s calf, or as a competition over another food resource. The same museum reports another whale attack in “Sperm Whales Attack Megamouth Shark” describing how in 1998 three sperm whales attacked a megamouth off of Indonesia for unknown reasons.

Sharks’ Most Deadly Predator

For the most part, large sharks such as great whites have few natural predators. Although whale attacks may occur on occasion it is unlikely that they are common. Unfortunately, humans are sharks' most deadly predator. According to CNN’s Lisa Ling in her December 2008 article “Shark fin soup alters ecosystem” roughly 100 million sharks are killed each year for shark fin soup. Decimating the shark population is not only bad for the sharks but can throw off the whole ecosystem as populations lower on the food chain are allowed to grow – potentially setting off a chain of further effects. According to the Shark Foundation/ Hai-Stiftung website one of every four shark species is considered endangered by the World Conservation Union.

suite.io/megan-jungwi