Shortfin Mako Shark (Isurus oxyrinchus): Speed and Facts

What does a shortfin mako look like?

The shortfin mako has a classic torpedo shape, thickest in the middle and tapering to a sharp, cone-shaped snout and a narrow tail base. Its tail is crescent-shaped, with upper and lower lobes of almost equal size, and a single strong keel runs along each side of the tail base. This high, stiff tail is built for powerful, efficient swimming.

The back is a brilliant metallic blue, sharply separated from the white belly, a pattern called countershading that makes the shark hard to see from above or below. The underside of the snout and the area around the mouth are white. Young makos have a black smudge on the tip of the snout, and very large adults tend to be darker overall.

Makos have large black eyes and long, slender, hook-like teeth with smooth edges and no side points. The front teeth of the lower jaw stick out even when the mouth is closed, giving the shark a fierce look. In makos over about 3 m (10 ft), the teeth become broader and flatter, suited to cutting larger prey.

Name and relatives

The word “mako” comes from the Māori language of New Zealand and means shark or shark tooth. The scientific name Isurus means “equal tail”, and oxyrinchus means “sharp snout”. In Australia the species is also called the blue pointer, and older names include bonito shark.

The shortfin mako belongs to the family Lamnidae, the mackerel sharks, along with the great white shark, the porbeagle and the salmon shark. All of them are warm-bodied, fast-swimming predators. Its closest relative is the longfin mako (Isurus paucus), a rarer, deeper-living shark with much longer pectoral fins and larger eyes.

The mako is easy to confuse with the porbeagle of the North Atlantic, which has a similar shape and also lives in European waters. A mako has only one keel on each side of the tail base, while a porbeagle has a second, smaller keel below it. Mako teeth also lack the small side points that porbeagle teeth have at their base.

How big do shortfin makos get?

Shortfin makos are large sharks, though much smaller than great whites. Females grow larger than males.

The longest verified shortfin mako, 4.45 m (14.6 ft), was caught off the Mediterranean coast of France in 1973. Older reports of much larger makos are based on estimates and are not considered reliable.

Where do shortfin makos live?

The shortfin mako lives in temperate and tropical seas around the world. In the western Atlantic it ranges from the Grand Banks off Canada to Argentina, including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. In the eastern Atlantic it is found from Norway to South Africa, including the Mediterranean, and it also occurs throughout the Indian Ocean and from Japan to New Zealand and California to Chile in the Pacific.

It is mainly an open-ocean shark, usually found well offshore in the upper 150 m (490 ft) of water, though it can dive to about 500 m (1,640 ft) and sometimes comes close to the coast where the continental shelf is narrow. It is seldom found in water colder than about 16 °C (61 °F).

Makos travel long distances. A female tagged off California was caught 2,776 km (1,725 mi) away in the central Pacific, and another mako swam 2,128 km (1,322 mi) in 37 days, an average of about 58 km (36 mi) a day.

What do shortfin makos eat?

The shortfin mako is a top predator of the open ocean. It eats mostly bony fish, including bluefish, mackerels, herring, tunas, bonito and billfish such as the swordfish, as well as squid. Large makos also take other sharks, dolphins and porpoises, and occasionally sea turtles and seabirds.

Diet varies by region. In a classic study off the northeastern United States, bluefish made up about three-quarters of the stomach contents by volume. The same research estimated that makos eat about 3% of their body weight a day, several times more than slow, cold-bodied sharks.

Makos often attack from below, rushing up at prey before it notices them. Swordfish sometimes fight back: makos have been found off Sicily with broken-off swordfish bills stuck in their heads and gills.

Warm muscles and speed

Like other mackerel sharks, the shortfin mako is partly warm-blooded. A network of fine blood vessels called a rete mirabile works as a heat exchanger, keeping heat produced by the swimming muscles inside the body instead of losing it at the gills. As a result, a mako’s muscles are typically a few degrees warmer than the surrounding water, which helps them contract faster and more powerfully.

Warm muscles, a torpedo body and a stiff crescent tail make the mako a superb sprinter. It is often credited with bursts of up to 74 km/h (46 mph), but this figure is an estimate. When researchers fitted two makos with speed-recording tags in a study published in 2023, the fastest burst measured was about 18 km/h (11 mph), while normal cruising speed was about 3 km/h (2 mph). The evidence is explained in What is the fastest shark?

The mako’s skin may help too. Like all sharks, it is covered in tiny tooth-like scales called dermal denticles. On a mako’s flanks these scales are unusually flexible, and research suggests they can tilt up slightly as water flows over them, which may help control the flow along the body and reduce drag during fast swimming.

Behavior

Shortfin makos are usually solitary. Males and females often live apart, and in some regions adults of the two sexes are rarely caught together. They are active hunters, regularly diving below the warm surface layer to hunt and returning to warmer water to heat up again.

Makos are famous for leaping. Hooked makos often jump high out of the water, and some have landed in boats.

Shortfin makos do very poorly in captivity. Attempts to keep them in aquariums have usually failed within days or weeks, because these fast, wide-ranging swimmers struggle to avoid tank walls and often stop feeding.

Reproduction and lifespan

The shortfin mako gives birth to live young. The eggs hatch inside the mother, and the developing pups feed on extra unfertilized eggs that she keeps producing, a strategy called oophagy. Pregnancy lasts about 15–18 months. A litter usually contains 4–18 pups, occasionally up to about 25, each 60–70 cm (24–28 in) long at birth. Females then rest for about 18 months, so they give birth only about once every three years.

Makos grow up slowly. Males mature at about 7–9 years old, but females do not breed until about 18–21 years old. Studies of growth bands in their vertebrae show they live for at least 29–32 years. Earlier studies wrongly counted two bands a year, which led scientists to underestimate both their lifespan and their age at maturity by more than half.

Threats and conservation status

Young makos are eaten by larger sharks, but adults have few natural enemies apart from people. The main threat is fishing. Makos are valued for their meat and fins and are caught in large numbers on longlines set for tunas and swordfish, as well as by recreational anglers. Combined with their very slow breeding, this has caused steep declines, described further in How many sharks are killed each year?

The IUCN listed the shortfin mako as Endangered in 2019, up from Vulnerable, and its population is decreasing. The same year, the species was added to Appendix II of CITES, which means international trade must be shown to be legal and sustainable. The North Atlantic population has been assessed as overfished, and starting in 2022 fishing nations in that region were required to release makos instead of keeping them. Scientists advising the commission that manages Atlantic tuna and sharks estimated in 2019 that even if catches stopped completely, the North Atlantic population would take decades to recover. In the United States, NOAA Fisheries decided in 2022 that the species did not need listing under the Endangered Species Act, relying instead on fishing rules.

Shortfin makos and people

The shortfin mako is one of the world’s most prized big-game fish because of its speed and spectacular leaps. It is also an important commercial catch: its firm meat is sold as shark steaks, its fins are traded for shark fin soup, and its liver has been used for oil. A mako is the first shark to attack the old man’s giant marlin in Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea (1952).

Despite its fierce reputation, the mako is little danger to swimmers because it lives mainly far from shore. The International Shark Attack File lists only about ten unprovoked bites by shortfin makos, and many other incidents involved hooked sharks or boats. For a broader look at the real risk, see How often do sharks attack humans?