Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
A goblin shark is a strange, rare shark that lives deep in the ocean. It has a long, flat snout and pointy teeth.
Scientists had never filmed a living goblin shark swimming free in the deep sea. They had only seen dead or dying sharks that were caught by accident.
Now, scientists have filmed two goblin sharks alive in the deep ocean. One was near an underwater mountain, and the other was in a deep trench near Tonga.
This is a big deal because goblin sharks are 125 million years old as a type of animal. Scientists still do not know very much about how they live.
- shark
- a large fish with sharp teeth that often lives in the ocean
- deep sea
- the very deep, dark parts of the ocean far below the surface
- snout
- the long front part of an animal's face, including the nose and mouth
- rare
- not seen or found very often
- underwater mountain
- a mountain that rises from the ocean floor but does not reach the surface
- trench
- a very deep, long valley on the ocean floor
- species
- a specific type of animal or plant
- habitat
- the natural home or environment where an animal lives
Level 2 — Elementary
Researchers have filmed a living goblin shark in its natural deep-sea habitat for the first time in history, a milestone for one of the ocean's strangest and least understood predators.
Until now, every confirmed video or photo of a goblin shark came only after the animal had been accidentally caught on a fishing line and brought up to the surface, where it usually died. No one had ever recorded one swimming freely in the deep water where it actually lives.
The new observations, led by researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, come from two separate encounters in the Central Pacific. The first, in 2019, showed a goblin shark at a seamount near Jarvis Island at a depth of 1,237 meters, captured by a camera mounted on a remotely operated vehicle called Hercules. The second, in 2024, recorded a goblin shark in the Tonga Trench at nearly 2,000 meters deep.
The findings, published in the Journal of Fish Biology, greatly expand what scientists know about where goblin sharks live and how deep they can be found, showing that this 125-million-year-old living fossil still has plenty of secrets left to reveal.
- predator
- an animal that hunts and eats other animals
- milestone
- an important event or point in the progress of something
- remotely operated vehicle
- an unmanned underwater robot controlled from a ship or lab
- seamount
- an underwater mountain rising from the ocean floor
- encounter
- an unplanned meeting or observation of something
- depth
- how far down something is measured from the surface
- living fossil
- a living species that closely resembles ancient relatives known from fossils
- findings
- the results or conclusions of a scientific study
Level 3 — Intermediate
For the first time in recorded scientific history, researchers have documented a goblin shark alive in its natural deep-sea habitat, closing a remarkable gap in knowledge about a species that has circulated in popular imagination as much as it has eluded direct observation.
Prior to this work, every confirmed record of Mitsukurina owstoni derived from specimens accidentally hooked by fishing gear and hauled to the surface, an inherently distorting method of study that reveals nothing about the shark's natural behavior, movement, or preferred depths in its own environment.
The new study, led by teams from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre and published in the Journal of Fish Biology, documents two independent encounters in the Central Pacific: a 2019 observation at an unnamed seamount near Jarvis Island at 1,237 meters, recorded by the remotely operated vehicle Hercules, and a 2024 sighting in the Tonga Trench at nearly 2,000 meters, during which the shark appeared on camera for just over 20 seconds.
Beyond the novelty of the footage itself, the observations meaningfully extend the documented range and depth distribution of a species whose evolutionary lineage stretches back roughly 125 million years, underscoring how much remains unknown about deep-sea ecosystems even for animals with an ancient and continuous fossil record.
- elude
- to escape or avoid being caught, seen, or understood
- specimen
- an individual animal, plant, or sample used for scientific study
- distorting
- causing something to appear different from its true or natural form
- independent
- not connected to or influenced by another event or source
- novelty
- the quality of being new, original, or unusual
- range
- the full geographic area where a species is known to live
- distribution
- the pattern of where something is found across an area
- evolutionary lineage
- the line of ancestry connecting a species to its ancient relatives over time
Level 4 — Advanced
Researchers have, for the first time in the annals of marine science, documented a living goblin shark within its native deep-sea habitat, a development that closes a conspicuous evidentiary gap surrounding a species whose cultural notoriety has long outpaced the empirical record of its actual behavior.
Every prior confirmed account of Mitsukurina owstoni derived exclusively from specimens incidentally captured by fishing gear and hauled to the surface, a methodology that is not merely incomplete but actively distorting, since it can disclose nothing about the animal's locomotion, depth preference, or ecological behavior under natural conditions.
The study, conducted jointly by the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre and published in the Journal of Fish Biology, documents two temporally and geographically distinct encounters: a 2019 observation at an unnamed Central Pacific seamount near Jarvis Island at 1,237 meters, captured via the remotely operated vehicle Hercules, and a 2024 sighting within the Tonga Trench at nearly 2,000 meters, in which the animal remained within frame for barely 20 seconds before receding into darkness.
Beyond its evident novelty, the finding carries genuine scientific weight, substantially widening the documented depth and geographic distribution of a lineage with a fossil record extending some 125 million years, and serving as a pointed reminder that even taxa with an exceptionally long and continuous evolutionary history can remain, in behavioral terms, almost entirely opaque to science until direct observation finally becomes possible.
- annals
- a historical record of events, especially within a field of study
- notoriety
- the state of being widely known, often for unusual or unsettling reasons
- empirical
- based on direct observation or experiment rather than theory alone
- incidentally
- occurring as a minor or unplanned result of something else
- locomotion
- the ability of an animal to move from place to place
- taxon
- a formally recognized group of organisms, such as a species or genus
- opaque
- difficult or impossible to understand or see clearly
- recede
- to move gradually back or away from a previous position
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