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The Port Jackson shark has
two types of teeth in the jaws that are adapted for grasping and crushing the hard-shelled
invertebrates on which it feeds.
Photo by Scott W. Michael
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In this expanded article we will take a closer look at what the scientific literature
has to say about the diets and food consumption rates of sharks and rays. Click on
any of the topics listed below and begin your thorough investigation of
elasmobranch food habits.
Select a Topic:
 Opportunists & Specialists
Shark Size vs. Prey Selection
Feeding Patterns
Feeding Frequency
References
CRU Quiz - 
* I would suggest that Helm had been out at sea too long or was on crack when he examined the
stomach contents of the blue shark described in the sidebar! The shark would have had to be huge to
contain all the contents Helm lists. Also, comprehensive studies, where hundreds of blue
sharks were examined, have not turned-up as much "rubbish" as found in Helm's one blue shark
specimen! Although blue sharks may occasionally feed on refuse, they prefer relatively small
prey, like squid and schooling fishes.
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"Under normal conditions a shark will eat almost anything. One time we
hooked a blue shark…When he had been hauled up on deck, some of the crew members insisted on
splitting him open "to see what he had been eating." Along with an assorted mass of partly
digested garbage and small fish, a total of twenty-seven different and completely indigestible
articles spilled out on deck. In the collection we found two soft drink bottles, an aluminum
soup kettle with a broken handle, a carpenter's square, a plastic cigar box, a screw top jar
partly filled with nails, a two celled flashlight, several yards of one-quarter-inch nylon
line, a rubber raincoat, and a worn-out tennis shoe. The largest and most improbable object
was a three-foot wide roll of tar paper with about twenty-seven feet of the heavy black paper
still wound on a spool."
From Shark! Unpredictable Killer
of the Sea
Thomas Helm, 1961
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