Sharks

This issue, featuring five sharks in Canadian waters, is fearsomely fascinating.

Despite being demonized by popular fiction and movies, sharks are some of the most fascinating and diverse creatures on Earth. Sharks are also among the world’s oldest surviving species. Their earliest ancestors are thought to have swum the seas at least 420 million years ago.

Canada’s coastal waters serve as a permanent or temporary home to nearly 30 shark varieties. The five we’ve chosen to highlight in this issue, designed by Andrew Perro and illustrated by Julius Csotonyi, have their own unique story.

The endangered white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) – known more dramatically as the “great white” – inhabits Atlantic waters and occasionally travels to our west coast, making rare visits around Haida Gwaii during warm-water events.

Native to Canadian waters, the basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) can grow up to nine metres long on a diet of plankton and other tiny organisms. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) has also assessed this species as endangered in the Pacific region and as a special concern in the Atlantic.

Once assessed as a special concern by COSEWIC but no longer considered at risk, the blue shark (Prionace glauca) makes its home in the Atlantic.

The slow-swimming Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus), found on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, enjoys a longevity greater than any other vertebrate on Earth, more than 400 years, in fact!

A visitor to our Atlantic coast, the shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus) is the fastest shark on the planet, reaching speeds of 50 km/h or more.

Canada Post would like to thank the following experts for their contribution to this stamp issue: Warren Joyce, Aquatic Fisheries Technician, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Bedford Institute of Oceanography; Danny Kent, Curator, Propagation, Ocean Wise, Vancouver Aquarium; and Lee Newman, Curator, Fishes, Ocean Wise, Vancouver Aquarium.