A shark most people only saw hauled up by fishermen has finally turned up where it lives, deep in the Pacific and on camera.
A new study in the Journal of Fish Biology reports two sightings of the goblin shark in its natural habitat, the first time the species has been observed this way after more than 100 years since it was discovered.
“The Goblin Shark is one of these deep-sea charismatic animals that I never thought we’d see alive, and then to do so was amazing, but to then learn that colleagues in Hawai’i also saw one was just incredible,” Alan Jamieson, founding director at Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Center, said in a press release accompanying the study.
One sighting came in 2024 while Jamieson was exploring the Tonga Trench, the second-deepest point on Earth, using a remote, baited camera.
The other came from footage recorded in 2019 during an Ocean Exploration Trust expedition on the M/V Nautilus. Study author Aaron Judah learned colleagues at the Deep-Sea Animal Research Center thought the expedition might have captured a goblin shark on camera, and when he reviewed the video, he found it.
That shark was spotted in remote parts of the Pacific near Jarvis Island and the Palmyra Atoll.
“Seeing the most iconic of all the deep-sea sharks alive and looking healthy in its natural habitat is a unique honour,” Judah, a researcher in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, said in a statement. “I was also very surprised about how deep this species was found. The observation from the slope of the Tonga Trench is nearly 700 meters deeper than this species was known to live.”
The study says the 2019 sighting expanded the known geographic range of the goblin shark in the mid-Pacific. The 2024 sighting also pushed the known depth range for lamniform sharks by 108 meters.
Goblin sharks grow to about 3.7 meters on average. The species is known for its pink body, large nose and sharp teeth.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, goblin sharks are considered “living fossils” because they are the only living member of their family, Mitsukurinidae, which dates back 125 million years.
“It is really important that we still perform natural history work,” Judah said in a statement. “New discoveries like this demonstrate that there is still so much to explore in our deep ocean home. Given the newly-expanded geographic range of the goblin shark, this species can be included in regional management and a nationʻs biodiversity list, whereas, beforehand we didn’t know it was even there!”
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