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Mako Shark
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Mako Shark - Isurus oxyrinchus or glaucus

The mako is the quintessential shark. It is probably the most graceful of all sharks, the most beautifully proportioned, the fastest, the most strikingly colored, the most spectacular game fish, and one of the meanest-looking animals on earth.

Like other mackerel sharks, the great white and the porbeagle, the mako has a homocercal (equal-lobed) tail, and a horizontally flattened keel at the tail's base. They all are gracefully streamlined, with a conical snout, dark eyes, small second dorsal fins, and the aforementioned tail shape. The dark eyes give them a look of intense intelligence that they may not possess, as well as the bold look of another group of superbly designed predators, the falcons.

The keels of the mackerel sharks are fascinating and mysterious structures. They show a compression in the dorso-ventral plane of the entire base of the tail, also called the caudal peduncle. It is assumed that this modification is related to speed and power in swimming, since it significantly adds to the musculature of the tail structure, the shark's means of propulsion. Among the sharks, the mackerels show the most pronounced keels, but other species, not normally associated with fast movement, also have this modification. The whale shark and the basking shark, two plankton feeders that are characterized by slow and ponderous movements, have keels on their tail structure, and the tiger shark, not known for speed, also shows this characteristic. Many of the scombroid fishes (tuna, mackerel), and the billfishes (marlin, sailfish), have one or more small keels, but the broadbill swordfish is the only teleost that shows a development that is in any way similar to that of the mackerel sharks. In my paintings of the mako I have tried to show this unique structure by "twisting" the shark, rather than painting it in profile.

Another characteristic that separates the isurids from all other elasmobranchs is their ability to conserve body heat and maintain a body temperature that is considerably higher than the ambient water. It has long been known that certain scombroid fishes, especially tuna, have this ability, but in 1968 two Woods Hole biologists, Carey and Teal, were the first to mention this phenomenon in sharks. Only makos and porbeagles were tested, but white sharks, the third member of the family, were examined, and showed the same structural modifications, so it is safe to assume that they share this ability. According to Carey and Teal, heat is conserved by a "set of countercurrent heat exchangers located in the circulation between the gills and the tissues. The heat exchangers form a thermal barrier which permits the flow of blood but blocks the flow of heat." The authors conclude that there is a threefold increase in the muscle power for every ten degrees Centigrade rise in body temperature. A mako that can jump fifteen to twenty feet in the air requires a starting velocity of 22 miles per hour.

The reproduction and parturition of the mako and the porbeagle are thought to be similar. A pregnant mako has been examined, and it was found to contain ten embryos, five male and five female, ranging in size from 25 inches to 27.5 inches. It can be assumed that these embryos were close to term, since there have been free-swimming makos caught that were 31.5 inches long.

According to Bigelow and Schroeder, porbeagles are ovoviviparous (eggs hatch in the female, and are not otherwise attached), and they are nourished in utero by "swallowing unfertilized eggs which lie close to it in the uterus, the result being that the stomach becomes enormously swollen by the masses of yolk so swallowed, forming a so-called 'yolk stomach.' " We can suppose that the same applies to makos.

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