‘Ugliest Shark on the Planet’: See the Elusive Goblin Shark, Filmed for the First Time in Its Deep-Sea Habitat
Scientists spotted the enigmatic creatures in 2019 and again in 2024, marking the first time they’ve been observed alive in the wild. The sightings drastically expand the animals’ known geographic and depth range
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/SarahKuta.png)
:focal(750x500:751x501)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/3b/e2/3be28794-013a-425c-b9e6-bc6b2622402b/886174-medium.jpg)
For the first time, scientists have spotted rare and elusive goblin sharks swimming in their deep-sea habitat.
The sightings—described in a study published on May 19 in the Journal of Fish Biology—offer new insights into the behavior and ecology of the mysterious creatures. Until now, most live observations have come from sharks that were accidentally hauled in on fishing lines.
“They’ve captured the imagination of so many people, but we’ve never really seen them alive,” study co-author Alan Jamieson, a marine biologist and founding director of the Minderoo-University of Western Australia Deep-Sea Research Centre, tells the Guardian’s Petra Stock. “We actually know virtually nothing about them.”
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/e5/2b/e52bdbaa-8cdf-47b5-8499-550904afcbc0/mo_h1760_screenshot_3-610x320.png)
In July 2019, scientists were using a remotely operated underwater vehicle to explore the central Pacific Ocean near Jarvis Island when an 11-foot-long creature with a long snout swam by at a depth of roughly 4,000 feet. It was a large, solitary male goblin shark that, based on its size, was estimated to have been more than 50 years old.
“Seeing the most iconic of all the deep-sea sharks alive and looking healthy in its natural habitat is a unique honor,” says lead author Aaron Judah, a marine biologist at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, in a statement.
Five years later, in August 2024, a different team of researchers recorded another goblin shark while using baited cameras to gather data in the Tonga Trench, a deep underwater crevasse in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The creature, which they suspect was a female, did not approach the bait, but it did swim around in front of the camera long enough to give them a decent look.
The footage deepens scientists’ knowledge of these poorly understood animals. The 2024 sighting, which occurred around 6,550 feet below the surface, extends the species’ known depth range by nearly 2,300 feet.
Additionally, both observations expand the species’ known geographic range by thousands of miles, suggesting that the rarely seen sharks swim far out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Until now, scientists had only documented them along the western coast of the United States, in the Gulf of Mexico, along the southwest coast of Australia, near Japan and near New Zealand. Scientists suspect the species has a single global population, reflected in the animals’ limited genetic diversity, with an expansive geographic range.
Goblin sharks are “arguably the ugliest shark on the planet,” Culum Brown, a behavioral ecologist at Macquarie University in Australia who was not involved with the research, tells the Guardian.
“They are ridiculously horrendous to look at,” Brown adds. “Not even their mother would love their faces. … It’s like something out of a horror movie.”
Capable of growing up to 20 feet long, they have pinkish-gray skin, soft flabby bodies, small fins and “comically elongated” snouts, writes Science’s Jake Buehler. As they glide beneath the waves, their mouths remain retracted inside their heads. But, while hunting, they rapidly shoot their jaws forward and use their sharp, pointy teeth to grasp fish, squid and crustaceans—similar to a slingshot.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/79/78/79786977-a366-468b-a92d-9f7f62f690fc/goblin_00001_crop.jpg)
When they’re not nabbing prey, goblin sharks live “seemingly mellow lives,” according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They “rarely swim at more than a very sluggish pace,” which helps them conserve energy between meals—a helpful adaptation in the deep ocean, where high-calorie snacks are few and far between.
Did you know? Goblin shark confusion
In August 2020, a citizen scientist claimed that a well-preserved, dead goblin shark washed ashore in Greece—a place where the animals had never been seen before. Later, however, researchers began to suspect the creature was actually a plastic goblin shark toy, creating a bit of a scientific controversy.
These cryptic creatures are sometimes called “living fossils” because their lineage dates back nearly 125 million years. But despite their ancient pedigree, scientists still know very little about them, so every sighting is a valuable chance to fill in the gaps.
“It is really important that we still perform natural history work,” says Judah in the statement. “New discoveries like this demonstrate that there is still so much to explore in our deep ocean home.”
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/SarahKuta.png)