Footage taken by a remotely operated vehicle in 2019 showed a strange creature swimming nearly two kilometres beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean near Jarvis Island, around 1900km south of Hawaii.
However, the footage was not deemed important until it was re-analysed recently – revealing the first time the goblin shark has been filmed in its natural habitat.
The creatures, often called the ugliest sharks on the planet, have elongated snouts, which they use to detect prey, as well as jaws that can protrude from their mouths in a hunting strategy known as “slingshot feeding”.
Their blade-like snout is packed with special pores called ampullae of Lorenzini, which act as electroreceptors, allowing them to sense the faint electrical impulses of prey in the pitch-black deep sea or beneath the sand.
Goblin sharks live so far beneath the surface that they are never seen, with their existence only known from rare occasions when they have been caught on fishing lines or trawled up in nets.
The specimen was videoed gliding slowly along the sea bed, and is estimated to be around 3m long with pink and grey skin.
Aaron Judah, of the University of Hawaii, came across the footage after being told that an unusual shark had been captured during a livestream remote vehicle dive in the Pacific Ocean by Hawaii’s Deep-Sea Animal Research Centre.
After trawling through the archive, he discovered the team had documented the first goblin shark, and was surprised that it was 600m deeper than the species was believed to live.
Researchers also uncovered a second video of a goblin shark, taken five years later near Tonga, and published the discoveries in the Journal of Fish Biology this week.
The recordings also showed that the species ventures hundreds of kilometres into the middle of the Pacific, far further than previously thought.
Goblin sharks are often called “living fossils” because their lineage is estimated to be 125 million years old, meaning they swam when the dinosaurs were alive.
- Daily Telegraph UK
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