Bullshark

The Sharks of Thailand
By Lars Bindholt

Bull Shark. (Carcharhinus leucas)

A big Bull Shark at deep water near Hin Daeng

This shark, which is found in all seas, is very rarely encountered by divers in Thai waters, as it prefers deep waters. It has a reputation of being a bold, and in some places of the world, very dangerous shark. The Bull Shark is able to live in freshwater as well as saltwater, and is known to travel many hundreds of kilometres up the big rivers. The big sharks of South American Nicaragua Lake are believed to be Bull Sharks as well.

Grows to: 3,2 meters.

I have only encountered this heavy build shark, with the rounded head and grey-brown body with no distinct markings on the fins, on a few occasions. One day 7 Bull Sharks at the same time, came up from deep waters at Hin Daeng to have a pretty close look at me. Very exciting! All these sharks were the same size: about 2 meters long. Later I have again seen Bull Sharks at Hin Daeng. Apparently the big sharks around some of the dive sites near Koh Tao in the Gulf are also Bull Sharks and not Grey Reefsharks as thought by many divers. http://www.bigpinkshark.com/blog/bullsharkblog.html

During 2008 all the bull sharks around Chumporn Pinnacle near Koh Tao disappeared due to shark fishing for shark fins. The bull sharks around Hin Daeng has not been seen for a long while. Then in November 2009 some bull sharks are again seen almost every day at Chumporn Pinnackle, so maybe there is still hope:

Mads Frese. January 2010: Some more news from Koh Tao. We are still seeing bull sharks every day at Chumphon Pinnackle, both grown-ups and juveniles, so it's super to see several generations. A good sign.
18.01.10 25 meter down. We dived aprox. 30 meters from the reef and 5 big beautiful bull sharks came and surrounded us. They followed us all the way up to 14 meters of depth. Fantastic dive. They came very close, about 1 meters distance between them and us. The sharks were about 3 meters plus. Big and beautifull.