Whitetip Reef Shark

Guardian: Travis Sevier

Triaenodon obesus

I think one of the reasons people are awed by sharks is the way they swim. It is near perfection and when you look at their smooth power-rippling stroke, you know you are looking at a design that needs no improvement. 450 million years ago, when Antarctica was close to the equator and the Northern hemisphere was just ocean, you could see a shark swimming exactly the same way as the sharks you see today. In a time when a mountain range connected New York State, Greenland and Norway and the life on it was a few moss-like plants and small insect-like crustaceans, sharks had already conquered the oceans,

… and we were still fish, fleeing them with a terror that remains deep within our instincts today.