Гоблин аварга загасны амьд ахуйг гүн тэнгист анх удаа бичиж авлаа

For more than 50 days, cameras recorded the deep ocean between 800 and 10,800 metres. The goblin shark appeared for a little over 20 seconds.

That brief sighting, filmed on the slope of the Tonga Trench at 1,997 metres, gave researchers a record they had never had before: a goblin shark alive in its natural deep-sea habitat. The rare shark, Mitsukurina owstoni, had been seen alive before only after being caught on fishing lines and brought to the surface, where the animals soon died.

The new records, described by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa do more than confirm a rare deep-ocean encounter. They expand the shark’s known range into the Central Pacific and push its known depth nearly 700 metres deeper than before.

The findings, published in the Journal of Fish Biology, are based on two live observations. One came from archived 2019 expedition footage near Jarvis Island. The other came from a 2024 expedition to the Tonga Trench, where a baited camera recorded the shark on the trench slope.

A Rare Shark Appeared in Archived Footage

The first sighting was not recognized from a fresh expedition report. Lead author Aaron Judah, a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, learned in 2025 that colleagues at the Deep-Sea Animal Research Center had mentioned a possible goblin shark sighting from a 2019 expedition. He searched the public video archive and found the shark in footage from a livestreamed dive.

That 2019 footage came from Hercules, a remotely operated vehicle used during an Ocean Exploration Trust expedition aboard the exploration vessel Nautilus. The expedition explored deep-sea ecosystems near Kingman Reef, Palmyra Atoll, and Jarvis Island inside the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The shark appeared at an unnamed seamount northwest of Jarvis Island.

The record mattered because the species had not been known from that part of the Pacific. Until then, goblin sharks were known from narrow areas off the western United States, Australia, and Japan in the Pacific Ocean, along with narrow regions in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The Jarvis Island record added a new Central Pacific location to that map.

Judah said he was shocked to hear of the possible 2019 sighting because the species was not known from the Central Pacific. The discovery also showed that important deep-sea records can already exist in archived footage, waiting for someone to connect a brief image on screen with a species rarely seen alive.

Tonga Trench Footage Changed the Depth Record

The second sighting came in 2024 during an expedition to the Tonga Trench aboard the research vessel Dagon. The work was part of the Inkfish Open Ocean Expedition led by scientists from the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre. A baited deep-sea camera mounted on a bottom lander recorded the shark at 1,997 metres.

A bottom lander is a platform sent into the deep sea with cameras or instruments attached. In this case, it gave researchers a way to observe an animal that almost never appears in natural habitat footage. The shark’s short pass through the frame was enough to set a new depth record for the species.

The Tonga Trench record placed the goblin shark nearly 700 metres deeper than it had previously been known to live. Judah also said the sighting extends the depth record for Lamniformes, the order of mackerel sharks that includes white sharks, basking sharks, and mako sharks.

Professor Alan Jamieson, founding director of the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre and a co-author of the study, documented the 2024 sighting. He said he had never thought they would see a goblin shark alive. His team recorded more than 50 days of continuous footage across deep-ocean depths, but the shark appeared for only a little over 20 seconds.

A Living Fossil Still Mostly Known From Capture

Goblin sharks are often described as living fossils because they are the only living representatives of a shark family that stretches back nearly 125 million years. The label points to the species’ ancient lineage and unusual place in the shark family tree.

The phrase can make the animal sound familiar, but the records show how little direct observation scientists have had. Before these two sightings, live goblin sharks had been reported only after capture on fishing lines. Those encounters were not the same as seeing the animal in the deep water where it normally lives.

That distinction is central to the discovery. A shark brought to the surface can show body shape, size, and anatomy, but it cannot show the species naturally present in its deep-ocean environment. The new footage gives researchers a record of the animal alive in habitat, rather than a brief surface encounter after capture.

The two sightings do not show whether goblin sharks are common in the Central Pacific or how often they move through these depths. They show something narrower but important: the species occurs in a region where it had not been recorded before, and at a depth that shifts the known limit of its range.

Why a 20-Second Record Matters

The footage gives researchers evidence that can update the known geographic and depth range of a poorly understood deep-sea shark. Range records help scientists and managers understand which species occur in which waters, especially for animals that are rarely encountered and difficult to study directly.

Judah said the expanded geographic range means the goblin shark can be included in regional management and in a nation’s biodiversity list where it had not been recognized before. That is a practical result from two brief records: the shark’s presence can now be considered in places where it was previously missing from official understanding.

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