Shock shark caught on digital camera for first time in Antarctica’s near-freezing deep : NPR

[ad_1] <img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/2528x1685+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fee%2F6c%2Fd9d4566c47a58769721fbf5ff9c9%2Fap26049118586151.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/2528x1685+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fee%2F6c%2Fd9d4566c47a58769721fbf5ff9c9%2Fap26049118586151.jpg" class="img" alt="In this image made from video and released by the University of Western Australia, a sleeper shark swims into the spotlight of a video camera in Antarctica in January 2025." fetchpriority="high"/> On this picture made out of video and launched by the College of Western Australia, a sleeper shark swims into the highlight of a video digital camera in Antarctica in January 2025. College of Western Australia/AP conceal caption

toggle caption

College of Western Australia/AP MELBOURNE, Australia — An ungainly barrel of a shark cruising languidly over a barren seabed far too deep for the solar's rays to light up was an sudden sight.

Many specialists had thought sharks did not exist within the frigid waters of Antarctica earlier than this sleeper shark lumbered warily and briefly into the highlight of a video digital camera, researcher Alan Jamieson mentioned this week. The shark, filmed in January 2025, was a considerable specimen with an estimated size of between 3 and 4 meters (10 and 13 ft).

"We went down there not anticipating to see sharks as a result of there is a basic rule of thumb that you aren't getting sharks in Antarctica," Jamieson mentioned.

"And it is not even a bit one both. It is a hunk of a shark. This stuff are tanks," he added.

The digital camera operated by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Analysis Centre, which investigates life within the deepest components of the world's oceans, was positioned off the South Shetland Islands close to the Antarctic Peninsula. That's properly contained in the boundaries of the Antarctic Ocean, also referred to as the Southern Ocean, which is outlined as beneath the 60-degree south latitude line.

The middle on Wednesday gave The Related Press permission to publish the pictures.

The shark was 490 meters (1,608 ft) deep the place the water temperature was a near-freezing 1.27 levels Celsius (34.29 levels Fahrenheit).

A skate seems in body immobile on the seabed and seemingly unperturbed by the passing shark. The skate, a shark relative that appears like a stingray, was no shock since scientists already knew their vary prolonged that far south.

Jamieson, who's the founding director of the College of Western Australia-based analysis middle, mentioned he might discover no file of one other shark discovered within the Antarctic Ocean.

Peter Kyne, a Charles Darwin College conservation biologist unbiased of the analysis middle, agreed {that a} shark had by no means earlier than been recorded up to now south.

Local weather change and warming oceans might probably be driving sharks to the Southern Hemisphere's colder waters, however there was restricted information on vary modifications close to Antarctica due to the area's remoteness, Kyne mentioned.

The slow-moving sleeper sharks might have lengthy been in Antarctica with out anybody noticing, he mentioned.

"That is nice. The shark was in the appropriate place, the digital camera was in the appropriate place and so they acquired this nice footage," Kyne mentioned. "It is fairly vital."

The sleeper shark inhabitants within the Antarctic Ocean was possible sparse and troublesome for people to detect, Jamieson mentioned.

The photographed shark was sustaining a depth of round 500 meters (1,640 ft) alongside a seabed that sloped into a lot deeper water. The shark maintained that depth as a result of that was the warmest layer of a number of water layers stacked upon one another to the floor, Jamieson mentioned.

The Antarctic Ocean is closely layered, or stratified, to a depth of round 1,000 meters (3,280 ft) due to conflicting properties together with colder, denser water from beneath not readily mixing with contemporary water working off melting ice from above.

Jamieson expects different Antarctic sharks stay on the similar depth, feeding on the carcasses of whales, large squids and different marine creatures that die and sink to the underside.

There are few analysis cameras positioned at that particular depth in Antarctic waters. These which are can solely function through the Southern Hemisphere summer season months, from December by means of February.

"The opposite 75% of the yr, nobody's taking a look at all. And so because of this, I believe, we sometimes come throughout these surprises," Jamieson mentioned.