Marine biologist Alan Jamieson had given up on seeing a goblin shark in its underwater home. After all, they live thousands of feet underwater in total darkness and since being discovered over 100 years ago, had only been observed when caught by fishermen and brought to the surface.
But that changed two years ago when exploring the Pacific Ocean’s Tonga Trench — the second-deepest point on Earth — with a remote, baited camera. The Goblin Shark is one of these deep-sea charismatic animals that I never thought we’d see alive, and then to do so was amazing but to then learn that colleagues in Hawai’i also saw one was just incredible,” Jamieson said.
The study, published in the Journal of Fish Biology, details two observations of the goblin shark on camera. The first came in 2019 when exploring extremely remote areas of the Pacific near locations like Jarvis Island and the Palmyra Atoll. “Seeing the most iconic of all the deep-sea sharks alive and looking healthy in its natural habitat is a unique honour,” said Aaron Judah, a researcher at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.
The discoveries in 2019 and 2024 were not only enlightening for being the first time seeing the shark on camera but also in helping scientists learn more about the animal’s natural habitat. The geographic range of where the goblin shark roamed expanded considerably thanks to the mid-Pacific sighting in 2019, while the 2024 find extended how deep lamniform sharks could be found by 108 meters.
The goblin shark’s name comes from its unique, and slightly terrifying, appearance. It is about 12 feet long on average, has a pink, squishy body, and comically large nose hiding a set of razor-sharp teeth underneath. Goblin sharks are one of a species known as “living fossils,” since they are the only one left living in their family (Mitsukurinidae), which goes back 125 million years.
“It is really important that we still perform natural history work,” Judah said. “New discoveries like this demonstrate that there is still so much to explore in our deep ocean home. Given the newly-expanded geographic range of the goblin shark, this species can be included in regional management and a nation’s biodiversity list, whereas, beforehand, we didn’t know it was even there!”