A Long Way From Home: Greenland Shark Found Near Belize

For the first time ever, a Greenland shark — that up except now scientists had belief lived handiest in Arctic waters — was not too long in the past spotted strategy a Caribbean reef.

Florida World College doctoral candidate Devanshi Kasana was on a tiger shark tagging outing in waters off Belize when she and native Belizean fishermen came all around the fish.

One in all the strains caught a shark that Kasana initially couldn’t quite name.

“Firstly, I was sure it was something else, admire a six gill shark that are smartly-known from deep waters off coral reefs. I knew it was something odd and so did the fishers, who hadn’t ever seen anything else quite admire it in all their mixed years of fishing.”

She contacted her Ph.D. handbook Demian Chapman on the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium and sent him a photograph. To Kasana’s shock, Chapman stated it wasn’t a six gill shark but actually resembled a Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus).

Following more consultations with varied Greenland shark experts, it was sure that the shark Kasana and her Belizean fisher colleagues had caught was section of the sleeper shark family, either a Greenland shark or a Pacific sleeper (Somniosus pacificus).

The positioning the build the shark was discovered — Glover’s Reef Atoll — has a slope that descends down to 9,500toes/2,896m, deep ample the build the water might maybe perhaps be frosty ample to permit the Greenland shark to hold around.

The factor is, very miniature is known about Greenland sharks.

In accordance to Kasana and her colleagues’ file printed in the journal Marine Biology:

“That is the first file of a sleeper shark in the western Caribbean build and further helps the hypothesis that these sharks, most keen known from polar and subpolar latitudes, happen at depth in tropical areas.”