The media likes to paint the most gruesome and often deadly opinion of sharks as possible. It just isn’t true. Sharks are not out there; they are just beyond the breakers, waiting for you to step a pale foot into the water before singling you out and attacking. Sharks eat fish and sometimes other sharks. It has been proven that sharks don’t enjoy the taste of human flesh and tend to bite us once and swim away to find something that actually tastes good. But how do they feel about Pacific cod?
Sharks Eat Fish and Other Sharks
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that sharks, the predators of the oceans, are not super picky about breakfast, lunch, or dinner. In fact, a typical shark will eat mollusks, crustaceans, fish, marine mammals, and other sharks. Bull and tiger sharks are a different breed. They are the trash collectors of the deep. They will eat anything, which sadly includes trash like tires.
The biggest fish in the oceans, the whale shark, eats very tiny fish and plankton, making them completely harmless to the types of prey other sharks eat. The only fish sharks won’t eat are pilot fish, the little buddies that stick close to sharks to avoid being eaten by predators. In exchange for their safety, they remove parasites from their shark pal.
Let’s Talk About Pacific Cod
Humans love baked or pan-fried cod, and it is an expensive plate at seafood restaurants, but what do sharks think of the speckled silver fish? They think the fish is just as tasty as the next large fish. Pacific cod can reach over 3.5 feet long and weigh approximately 30 pounds. That’s a good meal for a large shark, like a grown great white shark or hammerhead.
The Pacific cod eats mackerel, crustaceans, eel, herring, other cod, and squid. It is also the primary food for sea lions and seals. Pacific cod is also on the sharks’ menu. They are bottom-dwelling, large fish that hang out along the continental divide in the Pacific Ocean, where sharks knowingly hang out and hunt. The North Pacific, Canada, and Alaska are where the most Pacific cod can be found.
The flaky, mild-tasting fish is typically frozen in the grocery store if it comes from Alaska. If it was caught further south, it is sold fresh. It is crucial to cook cod thoroughly because many carry parasitic worms. Sharks can carry over 2,000 parasites, and many are from eating raw, wormy fish. When a bigger fish eats a wormy fish, that fish picks up its parasites. So when a shark eats a big fish, it may have eaten many smaller fish and contain all the worms from them, which gets passed to the shark.
How Often Do Sharks Need to Eat?
Sharks have a reputation for always being hungry and out on the hunt. This is not true at all. Sharks can go days, weeks, months, and years without eating! Since they are cold-blooded, they can conserve their energy more than humans can. The fish oil that nourishes them is stored in their livers.
Great whites and other sharks frequently come across a dead whale floating along and get an easy meal or meals. With approximately 70 pounds of whale fat consumed, the great white can go for 1.5 months before eating again. If the findings did not include a fatty fish, the shark would need to hunt more often. How often they hunt depends on their size, how long it takes to catch their prey, and the size and fat content of what they eat. The record (that we know of) for the longest time without eating goes to the swell shark, which went 15 months without eating in one experiment. They are harmless and roughly three feet long.
What Other Common Pacific Fish Do Sharks Eat?
A shark’s diet depends on its size, difficulty in catching the prey, size and fat content of the prey, and how much is available where it was caught. Sometimes, sharks will eat vegetation. Many sharks’ diets depend on deceased whales, sharks, and big fish that they can scavenge. This normally comes with a price since many sharks may smell the decaying prey and may come to check it out. When sharks hunt alone, they don’t have to worry much about fighting off other hungry sharks.
Many species of sharks exist in the Pacific Ocean, whether migratory or for good. Each type of shark has its favorite food. Hammerhead sharks prefer stingrays; dogfish eat mollusks, and bull sharks eat other sharks, including other bull sharks. Great white sharks prefer whale carcasses, sea lions, and seals. Tiger sharks prefer sea turtles and snakes (and trash). Everyone has a preference, though, though an easy meal will always win over more difficult, energy-zapping prey.
We All Have an Important Role to Play in Conservation
Sharks play a very important role in the oceans. They are considered apex predators, which means they are at the top of the food chain. They keep the numbers of many of the other large predators in check and ensure that the smaller guys don’t become extinct from overhunting by medium-sized fish. Every living being has a place and a job on this planet.
As humans, our role is to aid the world’s animals with conservation efforts. Many types of sharks are critically endangered, and even more are threatened, meaning if something doesn’t change fast, those sharks may become endangered or even extinct. It is our job to fight back against the shark fishing industry and demand justice for these apex predators. Without them, the entire ocean food chain would crumble, killing everything. Purchase sustainably caught fish and buy local when possible. The United States is not a country that hunts sharks, but plenty of others do for their fins and oil.
