Footage of a sleeper shark traversing a barren Antarctic seabed has left experts with much to debate, because the newly captured video contradicts a widely held belief that the deep-sea dwellers don’t live within the region.
Many experts thought sharks didn’t exist within the frigid waters of Antarctica, the researcher and founding director of the Deep-Sea Research Centre on the University of Western Australia, Alan Jamieson, said this week.
The shark, filmed in January 2025, was substantially sized, estimated to be between three and 4 metres long.
“We went down there not expecting to see sharks because there’s a general rule of thumb that you just don’t get sharks in Antarctica,” Jamieson told The Associated Press. “And it’s not even slightly one either. It’s a hunk of a shark. This stuff are tanks.”
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The camera operated by the Australian research facility, which studies life within the deepest parts of the world’s oceans, was positioned off the South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula.
The shark was spotted swimming at a depth of 490 metres, in temperatures hovering just above 1 C.
The shark was swimming at that depth since it was within the warmest of several water layers stacked on top of one another, Jamieson explained, adding that he found no other record of any shark swimming within the Antarctic Ocean.
One other expert, Peter Kyne, a Charles Darwin University conservation biologist not related to the research centre, agreed that there have been no previous records of a shark swimming up to now south.
Data on sharks’ travel patterns and ranges within the region are relatively scarce as a result of its remoteness, Kyne explained. While climate change might be a contributing factor, it might also be that the slow-moving sleeper sharks were already in Antarctica, but no person ever noticed.
“That is great. The shark was in the best place, the camera was in the best place they usually got this great footage,” Kyne said. “It’s quite significant.”
Jamieson added that the sleeper shark population within the Antarctic Ocean might also be small, making them hard to identify.
The Antarctic Ocean is heavily layered to a depth of around 1,000 metres due to its conflicting properties. Colder, denser water from below doesn’t readily mix with fresh water closer to the surface.
Jamieson suspects that other sharks linger at the identical depth, feeding on whale carcasses, giant squid and other sunken marine life.
Research cameras stationed at those depths are few and much between and are only operational in the summertime months.
“The opposite 75 per cent of the yr, nobody’s all. And so this is the reason, I believe, we occasionally come across these surprises,” Jamieson said.
The mysterious depths of the Antarctic Ocean are home to only a handful of seemingly otherworldly sea creatures, including the mackerel icefish, which, as a result of its lack of hemoglobin, has colourless blood, and Antarctic cod, which, just like the Antarctic toothfish, have antifreeze proteins of their tissues and blood.
Similarly, anglerfish, distinguished by a bioluminescent bulb on their heads, large mouths and sharp teeth, were first documented in Antarctic waters in 2014 and are commonly found at depths of between 1,000 and a pair of,000 metres.
— With files from The Associated Press
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