Video footage of a 2009 encounter with an incredibly rare creature known as a ghost shark was recently released by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and revealed this aquatic oddity covers much more ground than researchers previously believed.
This marks the first time that the ghost shark, officially known as the pointy-nosed blue ratfish or Hydrolagus trolli, had been seen in the wild, according to the Daily Mail. Previously the creature had been captured in the waters around Australia and New Zealand, the British newspaper added, but the latest specimen was sighted in the waters near Hawaii and California.
As study author Lonny Lundsten and colleagues reported earlier this year in the journal Marine Biodiversity Records, they saw the ghost shark swimming at depths of 1,640 meters (about 5,381 feet) in the central and eastern North Pacific Ocean, extending the creature’s known geographic range by approximately 6,000 kilometers (more than 3,700 miles).
In a statement, the MBARI team said that this marked the first time that Hydrolagus trolli had been officially identified anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. The video footage was captured by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) during one of several dives off the coast of California and the Hawaiian islands, according to Washington Post reports published over the weekend.
Footage could result in the identification of a new species
First identified in 2002, the pointy-nosed blue ratfish (also known as a chimera) has a skeleton made of cartilage instead of bone and gets its name from its jaw, which is fused to its skull and gives its face an appearance similar to that of a rodent. The creature also has a retractable penis on its forehead, but scientists are not entirely certain how this unusual organ is used.
In their recently-published study, Lundsten’s team presented evidence suggesting that the ghost sharks spotted by their ROV were the same that had been previously identified as living only in the Southwestern Pacific. However, while they believe the physical characteristics of both types of creatures are similar, they cannot definitely confirm this without actually collecting one of the fish featured in the video and bringing it back to the surface for additional analysis.
“This is much easier said than done, because these fish are generally too large, fast, and agile to be caught by MBARI’s ROVs,” the Institute explained. “If and when the researchers can get their hands on one of these fish, they will be able to make detailed measurements of its fins and other body parts and perform DNA analysis on its tissue,” thus either confirming that it is part of the same species, or allowing them to assign it to a new species altogether, they added.
“If these animals turn out to be the same species as the ghost sharks recently identified off California,” MBARI officials concluded, “it will be further evidence that, like many deep-sea animals, the pointy-nosed blue chimera can really get around.”
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