Tubarina is the Shark Princess and daughter to one of the most powerful men in Salacia, the Shark King. She is also cousin to Marcello/Marcela, sister to Veto and has a pet shark named Gummy.
In one view, Tubarina is very ingenious and feisty, but quiet and not much for talking. She disagrees with the common stereotype that sharks are evil and hates it when someone says as such. The only person who can calm her spirits is her father, who is full of pampering and affection for her, which is very different from his attitude on the throne of the Shark Kingdom.
In another view, Tubarina has an explosive personality and generally behaves in a very bossy manner, which makes her look very silly because she forgets about her friends and her kind side, which in many cases causes problems for her and her friends. Despite this, she is very intelligent.
Depiction[]
Tubarina usually dresses in blue and wears a crown in the shape of a shark. While her hair is not shown in the series itself (leaving its colour up to fan interpretation), Tubarina is revealed to have blonde hair in an illustration from the short story Mothers and Daughters. This is supported by her father, the Shark King, having blonde (facial) hair as well.
Character highlights[]
In The Pearl, Tubarina takes the pearl from her father’s sceptre to use in her shell display for school. On the way back home to put the pearl back in the sceptre, however, she and Gummy bump into some coral and the pearl drops down into the Abysmal Kingdom. She goes down to get it, which leads Ester to follow her. With additional help from Polvina, Gummy and Bib, Tubarina manages to retrieve the pearl, but the Shark King hears about this from Miss Marla and the girls are punished with cleaning the courtyard.
In The Picture, Polvina and Ester find an unflattering picture of Miss Marla that Tubarina drew, which she shows to everyone in the class. Though she manages to evade Miss Marla’s questioning by submitting her assignment, Tubarina accidentally submits the picture with it. Tubarina discovers this and failing to get it back before Miss Marla leaves, decides to go to her house to retrieve it. After an attempt at using sharks to scare Miss Marla fails, Tubarina decides to sneak into the cottage while Polvina and Ester distract her. When Tubarina is discovered just as Miss Marla is about to read her assignment, Miss Marla thinks that she wants more time to work on her assignment and gives her two more days to do it. Just as they are leaving, however, the picture falls out and Miss Marla sees it, but she believes it to be a picture of Marli and asks Tubarina not to draw silly pictures of others again.
When Marcello sabotages Tubarina’s speech in The Silence, making even Polvina and Ester laugh at her, she decides to stay silent towards them. For the next two days, Polvina, Ester and Marcello do everything they can to make her talk, but just as Marcello is about to give up, they realise that they just had to apologise to her in the first place.
When Tubarina’s parents and Marcello leave the Shark Palace for a week in Tubarina Almighty, Tubarina is left in charge of the Shark Kingdom. Polvina and Ester are excited about this since it means they will get to play in the Shark Palace for the week, but Tubarina is serious about ruling the kingdom, saying that her father is depending on her. The next day at school, Tubarina has sentries accompanying her everywhere. Polvina and Ester decide to open the secret room in the hope that Tubarina wouldn’t be able to resist having some fun, but Tubarina anticipated this and set a trap for them. After some convincing, Tubarina opens the room and the girls discover that the room contains some of the Shark King’s toys from when he was young. Polvina and Ester use this opportunity to convince Tubarina that she should have fun while she is still young.
When her older brother Veto returns home from school in Big Brother, Tubarina is distraught because everyone fusses over him and Veto always asks her for favours. However, when she discovers a letter stating Veto’s intention to drop sport at school and take up art instead, Tubarina uses it to blackmail her brother since their father is sports-mad and he would he angry once he sees the letter. Eventually, Veto gets sick of his sister’s scheme and goes to tell the Shark King about it. As expected, he reacts angrily to it, but when Tubarina backs him up, the Shark King is finally delighted to see his children agree on something and allows Veto to take up art at school.
In The Doll, Marli guilts Tubarina into giving away her doll, Bebe, which she does out of impulse. However, she regrets her decision and goes to get Bebe back from the Salmon Queen's daughter, the baby who it was given to, much to Polvina and Ester’s displeasure. After bringing Bebe back home, Tubarina has a conflict of conscience and eventually, decides to return Bebe to the baby.
Wondering why she has never had a turn at being lunch monitor in Lunch Power, Tubarina decides to put herself next in line for the role. On her first day of being lunch monitor, she gets bored at seeing nobody breaking any rules. After school, she finds a pocket of study room slips and the next day, she begins sending students to the study room for some of the most innocuous offences. Seeing this, Polvina and Ester hatch a plan to give Tubarina all the bossiness she could ever want by having everyone riot so she can send them all to the study room. When Tubarina realises this, she admits that she is bossy and decides to never send anyone to the study room again.
In Shark Love, a shark falls in love with Tubarina after she frees it from a rope attached to a broken anchor. On Polvina and Ester’s suggestion, Tubarina tries to reject the shark’s advances, but her attempts fail. They then decide to find a girl shark in the hope that the shark will like her instead. They do so while Gummy distracts the other shark with one of Tubarina’s spare crowns, but their plans backfire, causing the two sharks to encounter each other. The girl shark is trapped in the rope that the other shark was trapped in; the other shark frees her and they fall in love with each other. The shark “breaks up” with Tubarina before leaving with the girl shark.
In The Seaweed Potion, Tubarina frees Nip from a drifting net he was trapped in, but when she finds that he is unwilling to let anyone touch him, she asks her father for some advice on how to give Nip his confidence back quickly. The Shark King tells Tubarina of a potion that requires a red seaweed which is only found in one place in all of Salacia and she sets out to get it, only to discover that a barracuda is living in a nearby cave, guarding it. Polvina suggests to Tubarina that she be nice to the barracuda, so for the next few days, Tubarina gives him a bowl of food as she approaches him. Eventually, the barracuda becomes less aggressive towards Tubarina, so she takes some of the seaweed and returns. When she informs her father of this, he reveals that this was so he could teach her a lesson about patience.
In The True Princess, Tubarina wants to become a true princess after she reads a princess story to Gummy and he asks her why she isn’t. Knowing that Tubarina won’t stop talking about it, Polvina and Ester decide to give her what she wants in the hope that she will eventually get sick of it. Sure enough, Tubarina gets a dress and a crown like a true princess, but despite finding herself being annoyed at the trumpeting sharks following her, grumpy seahorses pulling her golden carriage, Mr Bernardo’s special lessons and dainty morsels for dinner, these nuisances do not dissuade her. Eventually, when faced with the prospect of having to marry Marcello, her “Prince Charming”, Tubarina gives up on being a true princess.
In the books[]
In The World of Salacia, a resistant Tubarina is dropped off by her mother, the Shark Queen, on the first day of school. Offended at Polvina and Ester mistaking her carriage for a shark, Tubarina proceeds to berate them before they head inside. Upon getting to class, Tubarina takes the last seat in the front row before Polvina can get to it, annoying her. At recess, Polvina and Tubarina are sent to the teacher's office after crashing into the cafeteria cook while racing to get to the last empty table.
After school, Tubarina presumably became curious about exploring Dryland as well and swam up to the limits of Salacia, only to see Mr Dennis being captured by Drylanders. She went to gather five more sharks just as Polvina, Ester and Mr Mollusc are pulling on Mr Dennis to prevent the Drylanders from capturing him, and proceeds to have them break Mr Dennis free before scaring off the Drylanders.
Upon returning home, Tubarina reconciles with Polvina and Ester and becomes friends with them. She blabs about their adventure, much to the horror of the Octopus and Shark Kings, but in turn, they become convinced that they could work together to maintain the balance of Salacia. Though Tubarina was punished by not being allowed to ride or swim with sharks for two months, the story of their adventure spread through all the kingdoms, leading to them being featured on the cover of Scales magazine.
In A Shadow in the Water, Tubarina hears about the opening of Sea Park and is interested about going there, but the sound of an overly-excited Ester taking endlessly about it irritates her severely to the point that she got very little sleep the day before the trip. This causes her to become provoked upon hearing Maurico talk about a shark that got in his way. Ester joins the argument and the three are grounded from going to Sea Park with the rest of the class, leading to them having to spend the day at school instead. Tubarina is seemingly silent and indifferent about this until she breaks down in front of Polvina later that day.
The next day, Ester, Tubarina and Maurico are joined by Polvina as they are looked after by Mr Lorenzo, a shark who can speak Salacian and hear her talking about him behind his tail. Tubarina gets into an argument with Ester and Maurico, which Polvina breaks up. It is then that the three learn that Mr Lorenzo is actually blind.
When a cloud of black goop covers Salacia and the Shark King has the camouflage activated, the group and Mr Lorenzo find themselves locked within the school. Tubarina learns about how Mr Lorenzo was blinded at the hands of a Drylander and how the Shark King taught him to develop his other senses and speak Salacian. It is then that a Drylander diver appears to close in them. After seeing him outside, Tubarina breaks a window and heads out to rescue Felipe, a baby shark, from whom she and the others learn that the Drylander was actually trying to help him, not hunt him.
As Mr Lorenzo offers to take Felipe up to Dryland, Polvina and the others go to warn the Shark King before he sends the sharks to attack the Drylanders. After gluing sand on some cut-up rugs to conceal themselves from the Drylanders, Ester and Tubarina head to the Shark Kingdom to find the Shark King. Encountering a soldier commanding a group of sharks to attack the Drylanders, Tubarina commandeers the sharks and goes with them and Ester to where Miss Marla and the others are. They allow the animals affected by the black goop to be taken up to the Drylanders, knowing that there are not enough resources in Salacia available to help everyone. When Isa is reluctant to allow the penguins to be taken to the Drylanders, given that they were one of the most affected species, Tubarina helps Polvina convince Isa to allow it, telling her that sometimes, they have to let go of the ones they love.
Over the next few weeks, life gradually returns to normal in Salacia. Tubarina becomes saddened as she wonders when Mr Lorenzo and Felipe will return. Sure enough, Felipe returns, but without Mr Lorenzo as he decided to stay on Dryland after realising that not every Drylander was as bad as the one who blinded him. Tubarina is saddened at this, but Isa echos to her the words she told her earlier about letting go of the ones they love. When Felipe tells the girls and Maurico that Mr Lorenzo had "pardoned" them of their punishment, Tubarina is finally able to go to Sea Park with her friends again.
In The Windy Letters, the girls and Tata head to an antiques fair, where they buy from an old man named Weasel a letter in a bottle that came from Dryland. However, Tubarina does not chip in as she is doubtful about the authencity of the letter or Weasel's intentions. Upon having the letter translated by Miss Marla, they learn about a poor Drylander girl named Windy who is wondering about what is under the sea.
Despite her suspicions, Tubarina ends up going back to Weasel with the girls to buy more letters. After agreeing to meet Weasel again with his partner, Mr Chain, the girls find themselves kidnapped and taken off-road. When Tubarina fails to call some sharks for help, Polvina gets the idea to use an oxygen tank to blow themselves out of the carriage. Unfortunately, Tubarina is knocked unconscious in the process. She is later taken to the Shark Palace, where she regains consciousness and is left to recover. She stays home from school the following day to evade questions from her friends.
Upon learning that Polvina, Ester and Tata are intending to head into the Abysmal Kingdom to salvage the third letter that fell in when Ester accidentally let go of it, Tubarina refuses to go with them after nearly being killed earlier. However, she gets Mr Gilson and goes down anyway, knowing that they would get into trouble somehow. She rescues Ester and reunites with Polvina, who had just encountered Bia, the Abysmal Princess. It is then that the girls learn that Mr Chain and Weasel had taken Tata hostage, but thanks to Bia and Mr Gilson, they manage to find Tata and capture the two bandits.
Bia invites the girls to visit the Abysmal Palace and have dinner with her. Tubarina bluntly asks her why she decides to live in such a dark place, to which she is told that she has a misson to take care of the abysmal fish. After dinner, Tubarina and the others head back up to Salacia, handing over Mr Chain and Weasel to the authorities.
The next day, the girls learn that Bia had managed to salvage the third letter and pass it on to Miss Marla for them. When Tata becomes distraught at the revelation of Windy's father being a turtle hunter, Tubarina tells the girls that she was right about it not being a good idea to go after the other letters. Later, when Mr Chain and Weasel pass on a note to Tubarina about the true story of the letters, she decided to visit them in prison and find out because despite her initial opposition to everything that happened, she felt sorry for Tata and wanted to do something to help her.
Tubarina made an agreement with Mr Chain and Weasel; if she went and found the fourth letter within a cave in the Turtle Kingdom, then she would ask the Shark King to reduce their sentences in return. Unbeknownst to her, she had walked into a trap; a giant turtle named Mrs Constanza had smelled on her the scent of the bandits, who had robbed her of the three letters she had in her collection weeks earlier. Mrs Constanza was unable to understand what Tubarina was trying to say to her, forcing Tubarina to defend herself as the giant turtle attacked her. Just as Mrs Constanza was about to finish Tubarina off, she recognised her saying Tata's name and lets her leave, only to pass out afterwards.
Mrs Constanza took Tubarina to the Turtle Palace, where her friends and parents were worried for her upon hearing of her disappearance. After regaining consciousness, Tubarina explains to everyone what happened and tells Tata about the letter she found. Tata has Miss Marla translate it to them, but not before having the girls promise not to look for any more letters.
In The Ballad of the Forgotten Princess, Tubarina sees Polvina read a ballad she apparently wrote, but is adamantly against going on an adventure to solve the mystery.
When Polvina manages to connect her ballad to Thorn, the Shadow King, the girls head to the library in an effort to check the royal family records, only for the librarian, Mr Lombada, to bar them from doing so as they did not have authorisation. However, their trip was not all for naught as Polvina discovered a book Miss Marla wrote about the famous objects of Salacia. From that book, the girls learn about the Staff of Oblivion, which was used to make people forgotten by others, and conclude that someone must have used it to make them forget about the Forgotten Princess, the main subject of the ballad.
That night, Ester and Tubarina offer to sleep over with Polvina. Maya, a civilian girl, visits and offends them with her attitude, which leads her to leave. The next morning, the girls learn that the library was robbed just as they were planning to go there after getting the authorisation to browse the royal family records. Realising that the Forgotten Princess couldn't be someone in their class, the girls go to see Miss Marla, only to find that some sharks had broken in and taken her class diaries. However, for some reason, Miss Marla had separated the student reports and put them somewhere else. From the reports, they discover that the Forgotten Princess is actually Maya, or rather, Bia, the Abysmal Princess.
Just as the girls are preparing to take action, Miss Marla prevents them from leaving, not wanting them to get involved. However, Tubarina tricks Miss Marla into letting her outside, at which point she calls for Gummy and goes to find Bia, leaving Polvina, Ester and Miss Marla to alert the Shark King. Tubarina finds the blouse Polvina gave Bia and has Gummy follow the scent into the Abysmal Kingdom, only to be taken hostage by Thorn. After a standoff between him and the Shark King, Thorn uses the Staff of Oblivion to make everyone recognise him as the true King of Salacia, but is thwarted when the Staff destroyed his mind due to him not being the guardian of the staff, which Bia was. Thorn was arrested soon after.
At the end of the year, the girls and Bia went on a holiday trip to the Abysmal Kingdom, visiting children like Maya and having more risky adventures.
In Mystery at the Sea School, Tubarina does not believe Maurico when he claims that a lionfish ate his homework, only for her homework to be eaten by a solefish the next day. Later, Polvina reveals that a mimic octopus was responsible for taking their homework.
In The Legendary Fish, Tubarina finds Rina, a baby fish that looks like a shark and a stingray, and offers to help her find her parents. After meeting Soraia and getting into an argument with her about which species she is, they learn from Miss Marla that Rina is actually a shark-ray. Tubarina and Soraia then take Rina to the Shark-Ray Kingdom, where she is reunited with her parents. The two princesses reconcile as their adventure led them to learn that they are related to each other.
In Turtles in Danger, Tubarina and her shark friends helped carry some turtles to the Turtle Palace after Tata discovered them choking on plastic bags that were floating around in the sea.
In The Little Hero, Tubarina invites Ester to race each other with their pets, but Ester wants to play a game that Spikey can play as well, which leads to an argument in which Tubarina calls Spikey "useless". When Leia asks them for help freeing a whale from a Drylander net, Tubarina has Gummy tear through the net, but he ended up trapped as he was still a child shark and his teeth were not very sharp. After Ester uses Spikey to free Tentie, Gummy and the whale, they proceed to ride the whale together.
In The Challenge of the Sharks, Marcello asks Tubarina to help free whale shark Xu's girlfriend, dwarf shark Joanna. Tubarina finds sawshark Zeca and together with hammerhead shark Sharp Sense, they free Joanna and reunite her with Xu.
Gallery[]
Click here to visit Tubarina's image gallery
Notes[]
- In an interview, Fábio Yabu joked that Tubarina's name sounds like "Tubaína", a type of guarana soft drink popular in São Paulo, Brazil.
- According to The Ballad of the Forgotten Princess, Tubarina's birthday is in April. Given that her zodiac sign is Aries, it can be presumed that her birthday falls within the range of 1-19 April.
- Tubarina has the highest number of appearances in the literacy series books, being featured in five out of six of them.