Scientists Film Live Goblin Sharks in the Wild for the First Time, Setting a New Depth Record
Researchers documented the elusive goblin shark alive in its natural deep-sea habitat for the first time, extending its known range and depth by nearly 700 meters.
Overview
Scientists have documented live goblin sharks in their natural deep-sea habitat for the first time, according to ScienceDaily. The observations, detailed in a new paper published in the Journal of Fish Biology and led by a University of Hawai’i at Mānoa research team, mark the first time the species has been seen alive without being pulled from the water, as Fox Weather reported.
What We Know
Until now, every confirmed video or observation of a live goblin shark came only after the animal had been accidentally caught on a fishing line and brought to the surface, where divers could briefly examine it before it typically died soon after, according to ScienceDaily. The new research reports two healthy goblin sharks (Mitsukurina owstoni) observed in the wild: one near a seamount close to Jarvis Island and another along the slope of the Tonga Trench, both in the Central Pacific, per ScienceDaily.
The first sighting came from footage recorded in 2019 by the remotely operated vehicle Hercules during a livestreamed dive at an unnamed seamount northwest of Jarvis Island, part of an Ocean Exploration Trust expedition aboard the E/V Nautilus exploring the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, according to ScienceDaily. That footage sat unreviewed until 2025, when lead author Aaron Judah — a doctoral candidate in the Deep-Sea Fish Ecology Lab and Deep-Sea Animal Research Center (DARC) in the Department of Oceanography at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology — learned of it from colleagues and confirmed a goblin shark had been captured on camera, as ScienceDaily and Fox Weather both reported. According to Gizmodo and Oceanographic Magazine, that shark was recorded at a depth of 1,237 meters.
The second encounter took place during a 2024 expedition to the Tonga Trench aboard the R/V Dagon as part of the Inkfish Open Ocean Expedition, led by scientists from the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Center, where a baited camera mounted on a bottom lander captured another goblin shark swimming freely, according to ScienceDaily. That sighting was recorded at 1,997 meters, per Gizmodo and Oceanographic Magazine.
“I was also very surprised about how deep this species was found. The observation from the slope of the Tonga Trench is nearly 700 meters deeper than this species was known to live,” Judah said, according to ScienceDaily, a quote also reported verbatim by Fox Weather. Judah explained that the Tonga Trench sighting also establishes a new depth record for the entire order of Lamniformes — the mackerel sharks, a group that includes the great white shark, basking shark and mako shark — according to ScienceDaily.
Goblin sharks are often described as “living fossils,” the sole surviving members of a shark family that dates back nearly 125 million years, per ScienceDaily and Fox Weather. Before these discoveries, the species was known only from relatively limited regions off the western United States, Australia and Japan in the Pacific, along with small areas of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans; the two new Central Pacific sightings significantly expand its known range, according to ScienceDaily.
Study co-author Alan Jamieson, professor and founding director at the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Center, who documented the 2024 sighting, said: “The Goblin Shark is one of these deep-sea charismatic animals that I never thought we’d see alive, and then to do so was amazing, but to then learn that colleagues in Hawai’i also saw one was just incredible,” according to ScienceDaily.
Judah said the findings underscore the value of traditional natural history research in the deep ocean. “It is really important that we still perform natural history work. New discoveries like this demonstrate that there is still so much to explore in our deep ocean home. Given the newly-expanded geographic range of the goblin shark, this species can be included in regional management and a nation’s biodiversity list, whereas, beforehand we didn’t know it was even there!” he said, per ScienceDaily.
What We Don’t Know
The researchers have not reported how many goblin sharks live in the newly documented Central Pacific range, and the two sightings remain the only confirmed live observations of the species in its natural habitat to date. It is also not yet clear whether the expanded depth and range findings will prompt formal changes to conservation status or fishing regulations beyond the regional biodiversity listing Judah described.