Common Names |
English language common names include blue shark, blue dog and blue whaler. Other common names are tiburon azul (Spanish), tintorera (Spanish), verdemar (Spanish), blauwe haai (Dutch), blauhai (German), blauer hai (German), peau bleue (French), sinihai (Finnish), zarlacz blekitny (Polish), pas modrulj (Serbo-Croat), guelha azul (Portuguese), pas modrulj (Portuguese), verdesca (Italian), Squalo azzurro (Italian), glucose (Greek), karcharias (Greek), glafkcarcharias (Greek), canavar balik (Turkish), pamuk baligi (Turkish), peshkagen (Albanian), karish kakhol (Hebrew), kalb al bhar (Arabic), mouch labhar (Arabic), blouhaai (Afrikaans), and yoshikirizame (Japanese).
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Geographical Distribution |
Blue sharks are found world wide in temperate and tropical waters. They are a pelagic species that rarely comes near shore but have been known to frequent inshore areas around oceanic islands and locations where the continental shelf is narrow. In the Atlantic they can be found from New Foundland, Canada to Argentina and from Norway to South Africa, including the Mediterranean. They range from South Africa to Indonesia and from Japan to New Zealand in the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. In the eastern Pacific, blue sharks range from the Gulf of Alaska to Chile.
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Habitat |
Being a pelagic species the blue shark's habitat consists of open ocean areas from the surface to 1,148 ft (350 meters) in depth. They prefer cooler water ranging from 44.6-60.8??F (7-16??C) but are known to have tolerances for water 69.8??F (21??C ) or greater. When in the tropics the blue shark tends to seek deeper waters with cooler temperatures. This is evident in the tropical Indian Ocean where the majority of blue sharks are found at depths of 262-722 ft (80-220m) where water temperatures range from 53.6-77??F (12-25??C). In the Pacific, at latitudes between 20??N and 50??N, they are known to migrate to higher latitudes during the summer and lower latitudes during the winter but their populations remain constant throughout the year between 20??N and 20??S latitude.
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