The smalltooth sand tiger shark is impressive with its prominent teeth and massive size: it can measure more than 15 ft. and weight more than 600 lbs.
 
We do not know much about this shark that lives so deep (in 2009, a team of researchers from New Zealand got the surprise to see one passing by in front of a camera placed at a depth of 2,890 ft.). According to the few individuals accidentally fished, scientists think this shark lives in all warm and temperate seas (including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean). Nevertheless, hardly any scuba diver could see one underwater, except furtively and at depths lower than 230 ft., in Malpelo Island, Columbia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
 
This video of the Spanish director Rafa Herrero Massieu is indeed an exceptional documentary: he managed to film this mysterious shark for long minutes, close to the surface, in El Hierro Island, part of the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands, off the shores of Morocco.

The very few scuba divers who could meet the smalltooth sand tiger shark all testify, as we can see on this video, of a non aggressive behaviour. Scientists consider that even with its impressive teeth, it can only hunt small preys, probably in the sand. Nevertheless, the biggest fish found in the stomach of a smalltooth sand tiger shark, caught in New Caledonia, was another shark of 4ft. long!

© Rafa Herrero Massieu www.aquawork.com / Original music by David Gonçalves