Elusive sleeper shark spotted in Antarctica for the first time

Elusive sleeper shark spotted in Antarctica for the first time

by Jenna Bryner Edited by Claire Cameron

A rare encounter with a southern sleeper shark in the deep, cold waters of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean has left scientists wondering what creatures can live in such harsh, extreme environments.

The footage of the shark was captured by a deep-sea camera in a trench about 490 meters below the sea surface near the South Shetland Islands in January 2025. The camera was set up by the Minderoo-University of Western Australia (UWA) Deep-Sea Research Centre.

During the shark’s surprise appearance, marine geologist and center member Heather Stewart can be heard asking, “What’s that lurking in the background?”

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“It was definitely very unexpected,” Stewart said. This is the southernmost report of the southern sleeper shark (somniosus antarcticus), according to researchers at the center.

These deep-sea predators, which survive on a diet of cephalopods, ray-finned fish and even some mammals and birds, can live 250 to 300 years, according to the center. The Associated Press reported The height of this person was between three to four meters.

The shark is believed to be female because the animal lacks claspers – a pair of appendages found in male sharks – and was swimming gracefully in the approximately two-degree Celsius subsurface layer of water. This relatively short cold corridor may allow such sharks to travel farther south and into colder areas than scientists previously thought.

The deep-sea habitat of southern sleeper sharks makes them difficult to study and the species has only been observed a few times.

“It’s quite rare to see these animals because of the depth at which they live. These animals have evolved to live for quite a long time and, like a lot of deep-sea animals, their metabolism is really slow, so they can go a long time without eating,” Dylan White-Kiely, a research assistant at the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, said in the same video.

The finding of this shark so far south indicates that it would not be alone in Antarctic waters. “This changes what we know about the distribution of sharks and their ability to tolerate extreme environments,” the researchers said. said in a statement. “The Southern Ocean may not be as shark-free as we thought.”

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