A half-blind shark that is typically thought to live in freezing Arctic waters, scavenge on polar bear carcasses and survive for hundreds of years, recently turned up in perhaps an unexpected place — a coral reef off Belize. This marks the first time a shark of its kind has been found in western Caribbean waters off the world's second longest barrier reef.
Devanshi Kasana, a Ph.D. candidate in the Florida International University (FIU) Predator Ecology and Conservation lab, was working with local Belizean fishermen to tag tiger sharks when the discovery was made.
It had been a long night of fishing. By dawn, the weather had deteriorated. Storms were gathering on the horizon. The team did a last check of their lines. On the other end of one, wasn't a tiger shark, but a rather sluggish creature. It looked old — ancient, even — and more like an elongated, smooth stone that had sprung to life. It had a blunt snout and small pale bluish colored eyes. All together, these clues led scientists to think it was a member of the sleeper shark family.
"At first, I was sure it was something else, like a six gill shark that are well known from deep waters off coral reefs," Kasana said. "I knew it was something unusual and so did the fishers, who hadn't ever seen anything quite like it in all their combined years of fishing."
Kasana texted Demian Chapman — her Ph.D. advisor and Director of Sharks & Rays Conservation Research at Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium — to share the news. She also sent along a photo of the shark. Chapman's response caught her off guard. He said it wasn't a six gill. But, it looked a lot like a Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus).
After conferring with several Greenland shark experts, the final determination was it was definitely in the sleeper shark family — and because of its large size most likely a Greenland shark or a hybrid between the Greenland shark and Pacific sleeper shark (Somniosus pacificus).
