One of the last things biologists expected to find in the warm Caribbean Sea was an ancient Greenland shark, a creature known for being far off in the ice of the ice age.
There is a shark species that lives for centuries in the deep sea.
There was a slow moving, sluggish creature under the surface of the water. A recent observation was published in a journal. The researchers thought it could be a sixgill shark. They confirmed it was a shark by taking a photo.
It looked like something that existed in the past.
When dinosaurs ruled the planet, a family of sharks were around 100 million years old. In the dark, thousands of feet underwater, the sharks grow slowly, move slowly, and age slowly. In the deep sea, moving slowly to conserve energy is an adaptation. They live for over two and a half centuries, and possibly more. They are the longest living animals on the planet.
The Greenland shark, with its stark greenish-blue eye, observed in Belize by marine biologists. Credit: Devanshi Kasana
It was an unexpected sight to spot a shark near a reef. It is not impossible.
It is known that this species thrives in the deep seas of the north. They could live in other deep ocean regions as well. The Caribbean is also included. The biologists returned the next day to find their line had moved a couple of miles away from the coral reef.
They saw a strange shark when they pulled up their catch. One of the researchers who spotted the shark thought it was very old. It was in the deepest part of the water.
"It looked very, very old."
The slope is 9,500 feet deep. It's a great place for a shark to live.
The deep seas are poorly understood. Just because we haven't seen a phenomenon doesn't mean it isn't happening. Alan Leonardi, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, said in 2020 that anyone can find something new if they were doing something unique down there.
It was difficult to find a shark in Belize. A protected area of the ocean required researchers, fishers, and the government to work together. Researchers were given the chance to observe something they had never seen before. The discovery was made by scientists working together, according to one of the study's authors.
Chapman said it was very close to coral. They are usually thought of as being close to ice.
The question is if this shark traveled to the Caribbean from the north or if it lived in the tropics for a long time. It isn't known. There is a chance that there are more of them in the dark waters.
Chapman doesn't think it's the only one.
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