(PCM) Researcher at the Monterery Bay Aquarium Research Institute are beyond excited to have just captured the first ever live footage of a ghost shark, also known as a chimaera, swimming about in the depths of the ocean. The news was revealed by the folks at National Geographic.
Ghost sharks are rarely, if ever seen by humans, and actually have never been viewed alive until now. These creatures, who pre-date even the dinosaurs, live so far at the bottom of the ocean that they are usually never discovered until they are dead. The chimaras are a cross between both a shark and a ray and come from a breed that split off nearly 300 million years ago.
It turns out that the footage of the ghost shark in action was actually a bit of an accident. The researchers who discovered the footage were actually geologists who were working on a different projects and looking at footage of dives which took place off the coast of Hawaii and California back in 2009. The researchers noticed that a small white shark kept bumping it’s nose into the camera and realized that particular shark resembled the chimaera species.
Further research leads to the ghost shark creature actually being a pointy-nose blue chimaera who mostly reside off the coast of New Zealand. How the creature ended up in the Hawaii/California area is still a larger mystery to unravel, but certainly one that researchers hope to solve in the near future. You can see the ghost shark in action below:
