Rare Greenland Shark Footage Causes Researcher to Totally Freak

Photo credit: National Geographic

After spending three or more hours watching video footage of a lifeless seafloor, it isn’t a surprise that this researcher nearly fell off his chair when one of the rarest sharks on the planet came into view.

National Geographic mechanical engineer Alan Turchik was working on a project to document the marine biodiversity in Frans Josef Land, which is a collection of 192 islands in the Russian high Arctic.

Each day they would venture out to sea and drop a glass enclosed camera into the deep. The cameras they use go much farther down than divers would ever be able to go, allowing them to study worlds out of our reach.

Turchik was reviewing footage from nearly 700 meters down when he noticed the video frame jerk like it had been bumped by something. He perked up and then next thing he know he was watching a Greenland shark swim right in front of the camera.

Check out the footage and Turchik’s reaction in the video below:

These sharks are considered an enigma because they are hardly ever seen and little to no studies have been done regarding the species.

Scientists are unsure of exactly how big Greenland sharks can grow but they estimate that it’s up to 23 feet long so the 6-footer that was recorded in the video was just a baby.

Researchers are also befuddled by what these animals eat. They are slow-moving and nearly blind which suggests that they are scavengers but the stomach contents of one Greenland shark reflect a whole different story. Peter Bunshell, of Indiana University South Bend, studied one of these sharks and found cod, wolffish, squid and a variety of other marine mammals.

How do they do it? We still don’t know.

The primary reason there is so little information this species is that there is no commercial fishery for them. If we aren’t seeking them out, we aren’t going to learn much about them.

In the past, people caught Greenland sharks to use the oil in their livers but when alternatives came along, the market dried up and we went back to keeping separate lives.

This is a species that we know virtually nothing about which (even if you know nothing about marine life) is evident by the researchers reaction to viewing the Greenland shark.

Read more about the project and the Greenland shark at National Geographic.