On matters maritime

The Greenland shark has to be one of the most fascinating creatures of which you’ve probably never heard. Growing sometimes to 25ft, it is the largest flesh-eating shark, longer even than a great white. It dwells in the deepest northern oceans. It eats seabirds, huge fish and seals, most of which it probably surprises and devours on the seabed. The youngest Greenland shark of reproductive age is 100 and the oldest may have been alive when the Mayflower set sail. It is, thus, the longest-lived vertebrate life form on the planet.

Whalers and the native people of the Arctic have hunted it for centuries, primarily for the immense oil-rich liver. Yet catching one is no easy business. As the author notes, the teeth are like ‘over-sized steel traps’. The outer skin is structured so that if you rub your hand along its body in a tail-to-nose direction it cuts you like razor blades.