The Red Sea Sharks (French: Coke en stock) is the nineteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comic series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé.

Influenced by Honoré de Balzac's The Human Comedy, Hergé used the story as a vehicle in which to reintroduce a wide range of characters who had first appeared in earlier instalments of the series.

[2] Realising that the only way to be rid of Abdullah is to restore the Emir's control of Khemed, Tintin, Haddock, and their dog Snowy travel to the Middle Eastern country.

There they meet an old friend, the Portuguese merchant Oliveira da Figueira, who helps them to escape the city and ride on horseback to the Emir's hideout.

It then transpires, from the Emir's explanation, that there is an ongoing slave trade through Khemed that is operated by the international businessman called "the Marquis di Gorgonzola", who falsely offers transport to African Muslims on the pilgrimage to Mecca, but then sells them into slavery somewhere along the journey.

However, Rastapopoulos orders a U-boat to destroy the Ramona, with the ship taking evasive manoeuvres to survive, ultimately being rescued by a fighter from the cruiser USS Los Angeles after Tintin dispatches numerous distress calls.

[7] Hergé was inspired to develop the plot for The Red Sea Sharks after reading a magazine article detailing the continued existence of the slave trade within the Arab world, in which it was claimed that African pilgrims headed to Mecca were being enslaved during the journey.

[13] To produce accurate illustrations for the Ramona, Hergé and his assistant Bob de Moor travelled aboard a Swedish cargo vessel, the MS Reine Astrid, from Antwerp to Gothenburg and back, during which they took photographs and drew sketches.

[18] Hergé's growing interest in art was reflected in the story, as he included a copy of Alfred Sisley's Le Canal du Loing at Marlinspike Hall.

[26] However, in January 1962 an article in the magazine Jeune Afrique criticised Hergé for a racist depiction of Africans in the story,[27] an accusation that would be echoed in other publications.

Should misfortune descend on me like the hawk on an innocent gazelle (for the world is made of life and death) I am sure that Abdullah will find you with warmth and affection, refuge and peace.

[39] Thompson added that The Red Sea Sharks "atoned for the relative failure" of Land of Black Gold,[40] believing that although it had a "rather hasty finish", it was "a first-rate thriller".

[15] Farr drew comparisons with Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, a series of novels that was contemporary to The Red Sea Sharks and which was similarly inspired by Balzac's The Human Comedy.

[13] Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline believed that The Red Sea Sharks represented "the culmination of his golden age", which had begun with The Blue Lotus.

[43] In his psychoanalytical study of The Adventures of Tintin, the literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès expressed the view that The Red Sea Sharks reflected a world in which traditional values have been degraded and everything – including human life – has become a commodity.

[32] Apostolidès opined that The Red Sea Sharks amplifies "the theme of the general equivalence of everything" that is present in the series, serving as "a kind of retrospective" by introducing old characters and establishing new relationships between them.

[32] He believed that the theme of the mirage pervaded the story, appearing repeatedly in such forms as Abdullah's cuckoo clock which concealed a water squirter and the pseudonyms employed by the various characters throughout the narrative.

He believed that a scene in which one of Bab El Ehr's men spies on the Emir in his mountain hideaway reflected a wider theme of eavesdropping that features throughout the series.

[46] McCarthy also highlighted Tintin's actions in returning Abdullah to Khemed, expressing the view that it is part of a wider running theme throughout the series in which the hero takes abandoned children to their home; other instances included Tintin's discovery of an adoptive family for the orphan Chang Chong-Chen in The Blue Lotus and the delivery of the lost gypsy child Miarka to her family in The Castafiore Emerald.

[47] In 1991, a collaboration between the French studio Ellipse and the Canadian animation company Nelvana adapted 21 of the stories – among them The Red Sea Sharks – into a series of episodes, each 42 minutes long.