Scientists have filmed rare goblin sharks alive in their natural, deep-sea habitat for the first time.
They documented two live individuals in the Pacific Ocean – one near Jarvis Island in 2019 and the second on the slope of the Tonga Trench (the second deepest trench in the ocean, after the Mariana Trench) in 2024. The discovery is published in the Journal of Fish Biology.
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For the scientists, seeing these bizarre looking animals in their natural habitat was a shock.
“The goblin shark is a deep-sea charismatic animal, and I never thought we’d see one alive,” says the study’s co-author Professor Alan Jamieson, Director of Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, in a press release.
Previously, individuals have only been seen alive in shallower waters after being brought up accidentally by fishing lines.
The animals in the footage look strikingly different from how people tend to imagine goblin sharks. This species is known for its slingshot-feeding ability. When prey is almost in reach, the sharks catapult their jaws forward out of their mouth to catch hold of it.
Depictions of these animals tend to show them with a grotesquely protruding jaw but, of course, this only happens during the moment they are feeding.
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As a shark swims along in the video captured by the research teams, its iconic mouth is closed but its notably long snout – like a witch’s nose – is still visible pointing out of the gloomy water.
In 2019, the first shark was caught on the camera of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) while the second was spotted on a baited camera during an Inkfish Open Ocean Expedition.
If the sightings alone weren’t exciting enough, their locations tell experts more about the lives of these little-studied creatures. Scientists previously thought that goblin sharks only lived in certain small areas off the western USA, Australia, Japan and parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. But these sightings were in the central Pacific Ocean and one was much deeper than expected.
“It’s not only seeing it alive that was fascinating, but also the fact the Tonga Trench goblin shark was 700 metres deeper than previous known, making the deepest-known white shark,” says Jamieson.
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Even with special equipment and weeks of filming, glimpses of these peculiar sharks were fleeting.
“On that expedition we filmed over 50 days of continuous footage between depths of 800 and 10,800 metres and this observation was a little over 20 seconds long,” says Jamieson, adding that this “is testament to how elusive this species is, and how special it is to have two observations in the same study.”
Learning more about what’s living in our deep seas help experts understand what should be protected.
“Given the newly expanded geographic range of the goblin shark, this species can be included in regional management and a nation’s biodiversity list,” says the study’s author Aaron Judah, from the Deep-Sea Fish Ecology Lab and Deep-Sea Animal Research Center at the University of Hawaii.
“New discoveries like this demonstrate that there is still so much to explore in our deep ocean home.”
