Although they are sometimes spotted in shallow waters, they can live in waters 7,200 feet deep and tolerate temperatures between 28.4 to 44.6 Fahrenheit (minus 2 and 7 degrees Celsius). Their population levels are not well known, but they are thought to be in decline, and are considered “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Greenland sharks are the largest fish in the Arctic Ocean, as well as the only shark found there year-round. Scientists can determine their age by radiocarbon dating the tissue at the center of their eyes, which are composed of proteins formed when the shark was first born. Scientists estimate they can live upwards of 400 years and in 2016 a 272-year-old individual was found off the coast of Greenland. Scientists recently dubbed Greenland sharks the world’s longest living vertebrate. Although they have been known to hunt seals, fish, and squid, Greenland sharks are primarily scavengers and will feed on the remains of large mammals that find their way to the seafloor. These big-bodied sharks can reach 23 feet in length and weigh 1.5 tons. According to him, it was likely a Greenland shark. advisor, Demian Chapman, a director at Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Florida, who said it wasn’t a six-gill. She sent a picture of the shark to her Ph.D. She thought it might be a six-gill shark, which can be found in deep ocean waters throughout the world. “When that individual came to the surface, we didn't recognize what species it was, even with our combined years of fishing experience,” she says. After two hours of fighting, the shark finally came into view.Īt first, Kasana and the crew weren’t sure what they were looking at. The hydraulic reel attached to the line was straining to bring its catch to the surface. “We immediately knew there was something heavy on the line,” says Hector Martinez, a fisherman who aids Kasana in her research. But then they went to pull in their reel. The weather on the day of the sighting was rough and the crew had been thinking about giving up. Her goal was to catch and tag tiger sharks to study their movement and ecology. Kasana had sent a longline into the deep waters that lie at the edge of Glover’s Reef, a partially submerged atoll. The sighting occurred off the southern coast of Belize near the world’s second longest barrier reef. This strange sighting raises questions about the true distribution of the Greenland shark, which was once believed to be restricted to the icy waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Īlthough Kasana wasn’t able to collect a DNA sample to confirm the shark’s identity, photographs of the animal have led shark experts to believe the animal was most likely a Greenland shark. Their finding was announced in July in the journal Marine Biology. “It was both surprising and exciting,” says Devanshi Kasana, a doctoral candidate at Florida International University who, along with a crew of Belizean fishermen, caught the shark by accident during a tiger-shark tagging expedition. Although scientists have learned to expect the unexpected when it comes to these sharks, the sighting still came as a shock. The latest surprise came when scientists spotted a Greenland shark in the western Caribbean, thousands of miles from its known range, in spring 2022.
While they mainly feed on fish and squid, they have been known to scavenge the carcasses of mammals such as horses, reindeer, and even polar bears. Over the past few decades, scientists have discovered that these ancient Arctic animals can live upwards of 400 years and are often blind due to a parasite that attaches itself to their corneas.
The lives of most sharks remain cloaked in mystery, and the Greenland shark is no exception-but what we’ve learned recently is extraordinary.
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