An ungainly barrel of a shark cruising languidly over a barren seabed far too deep for the sun’s rays to illuminate was an unexpected sight.
Many experts had thought sharks did not exist in the frigid waters of Antarctica before this sleeper shark lumbered warily and briefly into the spotlight of a video camera, researcher Alan Jamieson said this week.
The shark, filmed in January last year, was a substantial specimen with an estimated length of 3m to 4m.
Photo: Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, Inkfish, Kelpie Geoscience via AP
“We went down there not expecting to see sharks, because there’s a general rule of thumb that you don’t get sharks in Antarctica,” Jamieson said.
“And it’s not even a little one either. It’s a hunk of a shark. These things are tanks,” he added.
The camera operated by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, which investigates life in the deepest parts of the world’s oceans, was positioned off the South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula. That is well inside the boundaries of the Antarctic Ocean, also known as the Southern Ocean, which is defined as below the 60° south latitude line.
The center yesterday gave The Associated Press permission to publish the images.
The shark was 490m deep where the water temperature was a near-freezing 1.27°C.
A skate appears in frame motionless on the seabed and seemingly unperturbed by the passing shark. The skate, a shark relative that looks like a stingray, was no surprise as scientists already knew their range extended that far south.
Jamieson, who is the founding director of the University of Western Australia-based research center, said he could find no record of another shark found in the Antarctic Ocean.
Peter Kyne, a Charles Darwin University conservation biologist independent of the research center, agreed that a shark had never before been recorded so far south.
Climate change and warming oceans could potentially be driving sharks to the southern hemisphere’s colder waters, but there was limited data on range changes near Antarctica because of the region’s remoteness, Kyne said.
The slow-moving sleeper sharks could have long been in Antarctica without anyone noticing, he said.
“This is great. The shark was in the right place, the camera was in the right place and they got this great footage,” Kyne said. “It’s quite significant.”
The sleeper shark population in the Antarctic Ocean was likely sparse and difficult for humans to detect, Jamieson said.
The photographed shark was maintaining a depth of about 500m along a seabed that sloped into much deeper water.
It maintained that depth because that was the warmest layer of several water layers stacked upon each other to the surface, he said.
The Antarctic Ocean is heavily layered, or stratified, to a depth of about 1,000m because of conflicting properties including colder, denser water from below not readily mixing with fresh water running off melting ice from above.
Jamieson expects that other antarctic sharks live at the same depth, feeding on the carcasses of whales, giant squids and other marine creatures that die and sink to the bottom.
There are few research cameras positioned at that specific depth in antarctic waters. Those that are can only operate during the southern hemisphere summer months, from December through February.
“The other 75 percent of the year, no one’s looking at all, and so this is why, I think, we occasionally come across these surprises,” Jamieson said.
Heavy rain and strong winds yesterday disrupted flights, trains and ferries, forcing the closure of roads across large parts of New Zealand’s North Island, while snapping power links to tens of thousands. Domestic media reported a few flights had resumed operating by afternoon from the airport in Wellington, the capital, although cancelations were still widespread after airport authorities said most morning flights were disrupted. Air New Zealand said it hoped to resume services when conditions ease later yesterday, after it paused operations at Wellington, Napier and Palmerston North airports. Online images showed flooded semi-rural neighborhoods, inundated homes, trees fallen on vehicles and collapsed
FRAYED: Strains between the US-European ties have ruptured allies’ trust in Washington, but with time, that could be rebuilt, the Michigan governor said China is providing crucial support for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and could end the war with a phone call, US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said. “China could call [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow and cut off his dual-purpose technologies that they’re selling,” Whitaker said during a Friday panel at the Munich Security Conference. “China could stop buying Russian oil and gas.” “You know, this war is being completely enabled by China,” the US envoy added. Beijing and Moscow have forged an even tighter partnership since the start of the war, and Russia relies on China for critical parts
In a softly lit Shanghai bar, graduate student Helen Zhao stretched out both wrists to have her pulse taken — the first step to ordering the house special, a bespoke “health” cocktail based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). “TCM bars” have popped up in several cities across China, epitomizing what the country’s stressed-out, time-poor youth refer to as “punk wellness,” or “wrecking yourself while saving yourself.” At Shanghai’s Niang Qing, a TCM doctor in a white coat diagnoses customers’ physical conditions based on the pulse readings, before a mixologist crafts custom drinks incorporating the herbs and roots prescribed for their ailments.
Two sitting Philippine senators have been identified as “coperpetrators” in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), documents released by prosecutors showed. Philippine senators Ronald Dela Rosa and Christopher Go are among eight current and former officials named in a document dated Feb. 13 and posted to the court’s Web site. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders as part of his “war on drugs.” “Duterte and his coperpetrators shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals in the Philippines
RSS