Rare Frilled Shark Caught on Film

Posted on February 1, 2007

A rare frilled shark was recently captured on video by Japanese researchers.

Yet another rare-freaky sea creature has made a rare-freaky video appearance - courtesy Japanese marine researchers - before being promptly declared dead.

At the end of last month, we wrote about video images of a live giant squid - the almost mythic creature that is occasionally found dead but almost never alive. The squid was videotaped off the Ogasawara Islands after Japanese researchers snagged it on a hook, and it fought off being reeled toward the side of the boat.

Now it seems that a rarely-seen, prehistoric-looking goblin of the deep - the frilled shark - was pulled from shallow waters by researchers at the Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, after they were tipped off by a fisherman at a nearby port, who reported "an odd-looking eel-like creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth," according to Reuters.

Normally the shark spends its time over 600 metres below the surface. The one time it comes up to the surface where man lives it quickly dies. Was it really crucial that Japanese researchers try and capture the rare shark? Couldn't they just have observed it? Japanese researchers also recently killed a giant squid.


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