Blacktip Reef Sharks

Name: Blacktip Reef Shark
Scientific Name: Carcharhinus melanopterus
Length: Just over 5 feet
Weight: Between 20 and 25 pounds

Blacktip Reef Sharks Are known for the tips of their fins being black. Although, they're called Blacktips, just before the dorsal fin fade to black, the tip are actually white (as you can see in the picture above). Blacktip Reef Sharks prefer more shallow waters. They are very skittish and timid, therefore posing very little threat to humans. They are not likely to approach a human. However, they could mistakenly bite your leg while you may be wading in the more shallow water.


This type of shark is often caught for its meat, fins, and liver oil. Despite this, they're not considered to be a commercially significant species. This means they are not thought to be of any real significance. These sharks are thought much less of because of their timid and shy nature, when really, they should be thought more of because of it. Like I say all the time, sharks don't intentionally come after you. But on the rare occasions where they do attack a human, you don't hear the end of it. You are more likely to know of a Great White Shark before any other sharks because they're blamed for more attacks on humans than most other sharks. But no one pays any attention to the sharks that aren't guilty of hardly any, if any at all, attacks on humans.

Blacktip Reef Sharks often swim in waters close enough to shore that you can see their dorsal fin. They have been spotted at some depths unusual for a reef shark because of its usual depth only being a few meters deep. This shark, unlike the White Tip Reef Sharks and Grey Reef Shark, predominate shallower waters. The White Tip and Grey Reef Sharks can be found in deeper waters.


This shark is typically a streamline form, like most sharks. They also have a wide, short, rounded snout and their eyes are large and more oval shaped. The maximum recorded weight of a Blacktip Reef Shark was 30 pounds, and the longest recorded length is 6.6 feet.


Blacktip Reef Sharks, especially smaller ones, are commonly preyed on by larger fish-such as a grouper- and other sharks-Tiger Sharks and occasionally other Blacktips.


They are also an apex predator. However, they're an apex predator within their own ecosystem. They also play a part in helping structure inshore ecological communities.


This is my knowledge of the Blacktip Reef Shark. Hope you have enjoyed what you've read so far! :3


Image courtesy of http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu