One of the world’s ugliest sharks has been filmed in their natural habitat for the first time, according to a new study published in the Journal of Fish Biology.
The goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) was observed in 2019 by a team from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa sailing near Jarvis Island in the South Pacific.
Named after its retractable jaw – a unique feature that shoots forward at speeds of 3.1 metres per second to devour unsuspecting fish – the deep-sea-dwelling goblin sharks were predominantly known to scientists from dead specimens hauled from depths of up to 1,200 metres (3,940 feet) by fishermen.
“Seeing the most iconic of all the deep-sea sharks alive and looking healthy in its natural habitat is a unique honour,” said Dr Aaron Judah, the paper’s lead author and a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Department of Oceanography.
“I was also very surprised about how deep this species was found. The observation from the slope of the Tonga Trench is nearly 700 metres deeper than this species was known to live.”
Footage of the goblin sharks was captured by the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa using cameras mounted on Hercules, an underwater drone, though it wasn’t until later that Judah positively identified the fish from a recording of the expedition’s livestream.
A second sighting was made by a team from the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Center off the Tonga Trench using a baited camera attached to a ‘bottom lander’, a weighted platform used by oceanographers to conduct experiments on the seabed.
Goblin sharks usually grow up to 3.6 metres (12 feet) in length, about a tenth of which is attributable to its very long, flat snout.
But these creatures are famed almost as much for their elusiveness as their eccentric appearance, with the paucity of sightings routinely compared to those of other mysterious deep-sea denizens like the giant squid or the Mariana Trench ghost fish.
As such, little is known about them, aside from their unsettling feeding behaviours.
This mysteriousness has diminished somewhat in recent decades by sporadic sightings of goblin sharks in other locations, including off the Canary Islands and the coast of Japan – albeit away from their natural habitats in the deep ocean.
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