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Pelagic Thresher Sharks - Alopias pelagicus
This Pelagic Thresher Sharks - Alopias pelagicus visits Monad Shoal in Malapascua, Philippines regularly, especially in the early morning hours after the sunrise to get cleaned by various reef fishes.
Thresher Sharks have very long tails, the tails are nearly as long as the body length, which they used to whip and stun their prey before 'collecting' them to eat. When they visits the cleaning stations, they tends to swim in circles or figure-8 very slowly, and using their tails in swaying movements to slow them down in a very elegant way.
To my opinion, one of the top 10 most spectacular shark species. They also have huge eyes, compared to other species of sharks.
The pelagic thresher is a species of thresher shark, family Alopiidae; this group of sharks is characterized by the greatly elongated upper lobes of their caudal fins. The pelagic thresher occurs in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, usually far from shore but occasionally entering coastal habitats. It is often confused with the common thresher , even in professional publications, but can be distinguished by the dark, rather than white, color over the bases of.. more
comments (4)
Its actually very difficult to take good pictures of this Thresher Sharks at this location as it is not allowed to use flash photography. Thresher Sharks are deep water fishes and they don't like strong lights and will scutter away quickly the moment a flash goes off. They are reliably seen every early morning, but getting good footages of them is a different matter in view of the low light of early morning. Posted 8 years ago
As you can see the time the photo was taken, it was at 6:22 am. We have to get up very early and the Boat leaves at 5:00 am on this day, usually 4:30 am, and we get to the dive site around 5:45 am. Daybreak and sunrise is around 5:30 am in Philippines. Posted 8 years ago