Carlos Solis
Researchers published rare footage of this creature and a detailed account of the sightings in a paper in the Journal of Fish Biology.
A team from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa captured footage of one of the sharks in 2019 near Jarvis Island in the southern Pacific Ocean. Researchers at the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre recorded a second sighting on the slope of the Tonga Trench.
What makes this species remarkable
Mitsukurina owstoni, commonly called the goblin shark, has an unusual feeding mechanism. Its extendable jaw can shoot forward at roughly 3.1 meters per second to snatch wary fish.
Usually, goblin sharks are known only from dead specimens fishermen haul up from depths of up to 1,200 meters. The Tonga Trench sightings put these sharks nearly 700 meters deeper than previously recorded.
“Seeing the most recognizable deep-sea shark alive, active, and in its natural habitat is a special honor,” said Dr. Aaron Judah, lead author of the paper and a doctoral student in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
The team filmed the animals with cameras mounted on the submersible drone Hercules during the expedition’s livestream. Judah later identified the shark after reviewing the footage.
Size and mystery
Goblin sharks grow to roughly 3.6 meters in length, and about one-tenth of that length is taken up by their very long, flattened snout. Researchers compare how rarely people encounter them to sightings of the giant squid and other mysterious deep-sea species from the Mariana Trench.
Because scientists have so little information on the species’ behavior and distribution, single sightings outside typical deep-ocean habitats, such as off the Canary Islands and Japan, stand out.
The new video helps scientists see how these sharks live in the wild and supports further study of their distribution and ecology.
