Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffW1
Hi Rob,
Oooh, I think you were a bit braver than you thought at the time. I think that might be a silver-tip whaler shark, C. Albimarginatus, not the less aggressive white-tip reef shark, T. obesus. Despite its zoological name, the reef shark is a long slim shark with a longer head forward of the gill slits.
The whaler has a beefier barrel-shaped body, with a shorter wider head. Admittedly it is not always easy to tell from a photo, but how much more exciting if you had known you were hanging out with a whaler.
BTW the grey nurse is a very docile species, not at all dangerous to swimmers. Most of the attacks in Victoria and NSW here in Oz have been made by whaler sharks.
Cheers
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Er, thanks Geoff! This is not the sort of news I really wanted to hear
! Fortunately there were other, juicier, tastier people in the water at the time, so maybe things were OK after all
. I'll consult some books as soon as I get home - seems my 'study' was not quite up to scratch!
Cheers -