"MELBOURNE, Australia An ungainly barrel of a shark cruising languidly over a barren seabed far too deep for the sun's rays to illuminate was an unexpected sight. Many experts had thought sharks didn't exist in the frigid waters of Antarctica before this sleeper shark lumbered warily and briefly into the spotlight of a video camera, researcher Alan Jamieson said this week. The shark, filmed in January 2025, was a substantial specimen with an estimated length of between 3 and 4 meters (10 and 13 feet)."
"A skate appears in frame motionless on the seabed and seemingly unperturbed by the passing shark. The skate, a shark relative that looks like a stingray, was no surprise since scientists already knew their range extended that far south. Jamieson, who is the founding director of the University of Western Australia-based research center, said he could find no record of another shark found in the Antarctic Ocean."
The Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre camera recorded a large sleeper shark off the South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula in January 2025. The shark was estimated at 3 to 4 meters in length and was filmed at 490 meters depth where the water temperature was about 1.27 degrees Celsius. Observers noted that sharks were previously not recorded so far south in the Antarctic Ocean below 60 degrees south latitude. A skate was also observed motionless on the seabed, appearing unperturbed. Independent biologists reported no prior records of sharks that far south.
Read at www.npr.org
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