Sharks Beyond the Great White and How to Tell Them Apart

A whale shark can actively draw in mouthfuls of seawater and strain out plankton and small schooling fish. Look for the wide mouth at the front of the head and rows of pale spots across the back.

A basking shark feeds by swimming forward with its enormous mouth open. Water carries zooplankton past gill rakers that trap food, a different arrangement from the whale shark’s bursts of suction.

Its broad, soft-looking snout frames an enormous mouth, but the food is tiny. Researchers found krill in the first captured specimen’s stomach, an early clue to what this rarely observed filter feeder eats.

An adult great hammerhead has a nearly straight front edge to its head, with a shallow notch in the middle. Pores underneath sense weak electrical signals, helping the shark locate prey such as stingrays on or under the sand.

Young tiger sharks wear dark markings that form the bars behind the name. These fade with age, so an adult’s blunt head and broad, serrated teeth can be more distinctive than its stripes.

A sand tiger shark can gulp air at the surface and hold it in its stomach. That gives it enough buoyancy to hover in midwater. To identify one, look for a mouthful of thin teeth that can protrude past the lips.

A nurse shark can lie on the seabed during the day and hunt at night. It draws food into its small mouth by suction, a useful skill when a fish or crustacean is tucked into a crevice.

The pointed snout and crescent-shaped tail fit a shark built for fast bursts in open water. Its short pectoral fins also help distinguish it from the closely related longfin mako.

The long, eel-like body looks unusual, but the frill that gives this deep-water shark its name is around the gills. The first pair of gill openings joins across the throat.

The goblin shark’s long snout is conspicuous even with its mouth shut. High-speed video shows the jaws shooting forward from beneath it to seize prey, then sliding back into place.

Divers in the Philippines recorded pelagic threshers whipping the long upper lobe of the tail into schools of sardines. A single blow can stun several fish, giving the shark time to turn and eat them.

A large, pale-ringed black spot marks each shoulder near the base of its pectoral fin. On shallow reefs the epaulette shark can prop itself on its paired fins and use them to walk along the bottom.

Branching fringes around its mouth break up the edge of its broad, flat head. The patterned skin adds another layer of camouflage when this shark lies on a reef waiting for prey.

Look for six gill openings on each side and a single dorsal fin set well back on the body. Most sharks have five gill openings, so the count helps separate this deep-water species from the familiar shark silhouette.