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Deviation Actions

Whale shark

rieke-b

Published: Nov 13, 2015

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Description

Watercolours and white gouache paint, 20,7 x 7,5cm.

Finally, the last of my series of small shark paintings is finished. I prepared it last year, but only now I got to finish it.

This is a whale shark (Rhincodon typus), the largest fish of the world and also the largest living nonmammalian vertebrate. It’s bigger than some whales, filter feeding and completely harmless (if you don’t get too close to its huge, sharp fins). The largest one ever seen was 12,65 m (41,50 ft) long and weighed about 21,5 metric tons (47,000 lb). I’ve seen them often in nature documentaries. They’re just beautiful!

They’ve been existing for about 60 million years, but now they’re threatened (IUCN status: vulnerable).

Here's a nice Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_sh…