Whale Shark Essay

Whale sharks are big. They aren’t the kind of 18-year-old-250-pound big, but 20-ton-40-foot-long big. That’s huge! Actually if you do the math they are 1600 times as heavy and about six or seven times as long/ tall as a 250 pound, 6 foot teenager. Imagine getting tackled by that in a football game! In fact whale shark is the largest fish on planet Earth.

I just told you how large the whale shark is, but now I’m going to tell you about its other physical features. Its back and sides are black and gray with white spots and its belly is white. The whale shark also has a flattened head and its two dorsal fins are set rearward on its body that end in a dual-lobbed caudal fin (which is a fancy name for its tail). In addition whale sharks are filter feeders. Which means that they swim around with they’re mouth open, take a big gulp of water, filter out its food through its 3,000 teeth, and whatever plankton or small fish get caught in its mouth, the whale shark eats.

Now here’s a very important component of the whale shark: its migration. They aren’t like all the monarch butterflies and geese you hear about that go north in the summer and south for the winter. But the whale shark migrates where the plankton goes (their food). Because of that they don’t have a specific pattern. One year they could go one way and the next, a different direction. Plus some migrations could take up to three years. Through all of the randomness, here are some basic facts scientists have found about the whale shark’s migration: They swim 15 miles a day. They have a minimum range of 1,250 miles. Different ages and genders can go different ways. So to summarize the migration of the whale shark, they follow their food and can go a very long way.

I hope that what you read was interesting and made you want to learn more about the whale shark. And if you remember one thing from this, it should be that the whale shark is huge!