By Jim Wharton, Oregon Coast Aquarium Education Specialist

If you’re afraid of sharks and moved to Oregon to get away from them, then I am sorry to tell you, you’ve failed. Of course you did better than Ellen Brody in Jaws 4 who, after deciding that she and her family needed to get away from sharks, moved to a tropical island. The kind surrounded by water on all four sides. We do have sharks in Oregon—just not very many. Of the over 450 species of sharks in the world’s oceans, we find only 15 or so in Oregon waters. Shark infested, Oregon ain’t. We may not have tiger sharks but we do have leopards. We have no brown sharks but do have blue, white and even tope sharks. We have spiny dogfish and brown catsharks. We have sharks with five, six and even seven gills. We have baskers and we have sleepers. We have sharks named for other fish, cherubs and even farm equipment.

The smallest shark patrolling the Oregon coast is the brown catshark, a common bottom dweller only two to three feet long. The largest is the mammoth basking shark. At maximum lengths of over 40 feet (but more commonly in the low 30s), the basking shark is one of the world’s largest fishes. Swimming slowly at the surface, the basking shark can filter over 400, 000 gallons of seawater an hour with sievelike gill rakers. It’s filtering for food, tiny plants and animals called plankton. We also have two other very large sharks, the sluggish and strange Pacific sleeper shark, which is said to reach 25 feet, and the slightly shorter but significantly more famous great white (although scientists prefer to call it simply the "white shark").
The most amazing thing about white sharks is not their size, their jaws or their appetite for surfers but rather the simple fact that there is so much we still don’t know about these animals. For starters, we don’t know exactly where, when or how often they mate. Like gray whales, white sharks may head south for warmer waters when it comes time to breed. We can only speculate on how long they live or where they spend their time when not feeding near seal colonies. What we do know is that these majestic creatures are not the mindless man-eaters they are often portrayed to be. Recent research has uncovered complex social interactions between individuals. Isn’t it ironic that a shark that gets so much attention can remain such an enigma?

But whites are just part-time tourists in Oregon waters. Two year-round Oregon residents are among the fastest sharks in the sea. Sleek and powerful mako sharks can swim at burst speeds of over twenty miles an hour. The lithe and graceful blue shark is another speedy species that is also a champion distance swimmer, undertaking marathon migrations of 3,700 miles or more. Some sharks you might recognize, like the leopard shark, a three- to five-foot shark with dramatic dark spots and bands. Leopards are a hardy species that have become very common in public and private aquariums. Some you may definitely not recognize, such as the flattened angel shark or the thresher with a tail fin equal to half of its body length. And some you may be very familiar with and not even know it. The spiny dogfish is often caught by fishermen and is sometimes used to make fish and chips. And there are more. Sharks are animals of amazing diversity. Seen one shark and you definitely have not seen them all.