The anatomy explains the performance. A mako has a stiff, near-cylindrical body, a crescent tail with a narrow keeled peduncle, and warm red muscle held deep near the spine rather than under the skin. That internal muscle placement, shared with tuna, transmits force through tendons to the tail with little body undulation, which is efficient at speed.
Mako skin adds a second effect. Its denticles are flexible enough to bristle under flow on parts of the body, which appears to delay flow separation and cut drag, an effect since copied in engineered surfaces.
The numbers deserve care. Burst figures above 70 kilometres per hour circulate widely but rest on angling estimates, not accelerometry, and there is no consensus figure for a mako sprint. The species is also in trouble: North Atlantic stocks are severely overfished and the shortfin mako is now assessed as Endangered.