Sharks at night - what do they do?

[kaerius]

I've seen nurse sharks on night dives(including having them swim right by me, with barely an inch of room to spare), they're nocturnal hunters.

Some other sharks are conspicuous by their absence at night, I did a lot of night dives in the Maldives where reef sharks are plentiful, white tip, black tip, and grey... and but I only saw white tips on any night dive.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I've seen nurse sharks on night dives(including having them swim right by me, with barely an inch of room to spare), they're nocturnal hunters.

Some other sharks are conspicuous by their absence at night, I did a lot of night dives in the Maldives where reef sharks are plentiful, white tip, black tip, and grey... and but I only saw white tips on any night dive.

Where? The grey nurse sharks I saw at Fish Rock, Australia, were quite active during the day. I did not dive at night to see what their behavior was like then.

 

[John Bantin]

Alimata, Maldives - check it out!

 

[kaerius]

Where? The grey nurse sharks I saw at Fish Rock, Australia, were quite active during the day. I did not dive at night to see what their behavior was like then.

Maldives. During the daytime the only ones I saw were resting in a cave, and during night time I saw a bunch of them very active, near a fisherman's pier. Dozens of nurse sharks and even more assorted stingrays, all around us, I had several nurse sharks pass close enough that I could've accidentally bumped them just by turning around. We actually had nurse sharks circling us on the safety stop too.

*checks divelog* Yup, Alimatha Faru.

 

[DiveTheGalapagos]

Tagging has shown that the Galapagos sharks around Wolf Island (Galapagos) stick pretty close to the shoreline during the day and head out about 2 kilometers to feed at night.

 

[WeRtheOcean]

My only experience with sharks in the wild was at night.

I was stationed at Pearl Harbor. We were in port, and I was standing the midwatch (midnight to 4am) on the quarterdeck. I had to go over to the opposite side for some reason (the side away from the pier), and in the ship's lights, I saw the water was full of hundreds of baby hammerheads.

 

[KenGordon]

The BBC series ‘Shark’ has a bit about this in episode one at about 32 minutes. It is on Netflix. This bit might actually be an outtake from Blue Planet II.

 

[John Dickerson]

On a night dive at Stetson Bank, 2 large (10-11 ft) bull sharks followed my youngest daughter and I around for the entire dive. They stayed at the very edge of our light beams, but were always there until we started our ascent. So at least 2 of them swim around at night.

 

[John Bantin]

 

[divad]

What do sharks do at night?

Eat stuff?