Like cars lined up at a car wash, sharks and rays gather at ocean cleaning stations that new research finds are mostly located at seamounts.
There, hungry and detail-driven cleaner wrasse fish rid sharks of dead skin, external parasites and other undesirables.
A study, was conducted to help to explain why many oceanic sharks regularly venture into dangerous shallow coastal water (were they are more vulnerable to humans — their #1 predator) to be cleaned up.
Observations from the study revealed that sharks prefer to get their scrub down in the morning. Cleaning activity gradually dies down throughout the rest of the day
“Cleaners showed preferences for foraging on specific areas of a thresher shark’s body. For all events combined, cleaners were observed to conduct 2,757 inspections, of which 33.9 percent took place on the shark’s pelvis, 23.3 percent on the pectoral fins, 22.3 percent on the caudal fin, 8.6 percent on the body, 8.3 percent on the head, 2.1 percent on the dorsal fin, and 1.5 percent on the gills respectively.”
We can then speculate that a lot of gunk collects on shark pelvises as they go about their daily business.
Happiness in sharks hasn’t yet been studied or proven, but my bet would be that shark bliss occurs at these seamount stations.
[Image via WENN.]
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