Scientists have published the first live, in-habitat video observations of the goblin shark, a deep-sea predator so rarely encountered that almost everything known about the species comes from dead specimens pulled up in fishing nets. Two separate recordings, one captured in 2019 near an unnamed seamount northwest of Jarvis Island and another in 2024 on the slope of the Tonga Trench at a depth of 1,997 meters, show the animal actively hunting in its natural environment. The findings, described in a new paper in the Journal of Fish Biology, reshape what researchers understand about where and how Mitsukurina owstoni feeds in the deep Pacific.
Why these goblin shark sightings change the scientific record
Before these two recordings, no peer-reviewed study had documented a living goblin shark behaving naturally on the ocean floor. Earlier footage, including video obtained by NHK and analyzed in a study of jaw mechanics, came from sharks that had been captured or were in distressed states near the surface. That work established the species’ signature rapid jaw protrusion, in which the upper jaw detaches and shoots forward to seize prey, but it could not confirm whether the same behavior occurred at depth under normal conditions. The new in-situ observations fill that gap by recording the shark in its own habitat, undisturbed by capture gear or shallow-water stress.
The two sighting locations also matter for biogeography. Goblin sharks have been pulled from scattered sites across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans, but confirmed range data remain thin. A Central Pacific record near Jarvis Island and a South Pacific record on the Tonga Trench slope expand the map of where the species actually lives and hunts, rather than where it accidentally surfaces in trawl bycatch. For a deep-sea animal whose known distribution has been pieced together from isolated captures, each verified location helps refine models of population structure and connectivity across ocean basins.
Behaviorally, the videos offer the first direct look at a healthy goblin shark’s hunting posture and swimming style at depth. In both encounters, the shark cruised close to the seafloor, holding its long, flattened snout slightly downward as it investigated the area around the camera. The body movements appeared deliberate rather than frantic, consistent with an ambush predator conserving energy in a low-food environment. While the footage is too short to capture a full feeding sequence, it confirms that the species actively patrols the benthic zone rather than drifting passively through midwater, as some earlier hypotheses suggested.
How archived footage and a baited lander produced the evidence
The 2019 observation came from a camera system aboard ROV Hercules during an Ocean Exploration Trust expedition on E/V Nautilus. The footage sat in publicly archived livestream video for years until colleagues at the Deep-sea Animal Research Center flagged a possible sighting. Aaron Judah, a researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, confirmed the identification by reviewing the archived clip, according to the university-linked research databases that catalog the work. That discovery process highlights how much unexamined deep-sea video already exists in institutional archives, waiting for expert eyes.
The 2024 observation used a different method entirely. During the Inkfish expedition aboard R/V Dagon, a team from the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre deployed a baited camera on a bottom lander on the slope of the Tonga Trench. The shark appeared at a reported depth of 1,997 meters, approaching the bait frame from downslope before circling the apparatus. The expedition collected more than 50 days of continuous footage across its sampling effort, and the goblin shark showed up in only a brief window of that massive dataset. Both sightings were analyzed together in the journal paper, providing the first peer-reviewed in-situ documentation of the species.
The contrast between the two encounters is telling. The 2019 shark was spotted near a seamount, a type of underwater mountain where currents concentrate nutrients and prey. The 2024 shark appeared on a trench slope, a steeper and more sediment-heavy environment. One hypothesis holds that goblin sharks preferentially target seamount slopes over trench axes for ambush hunting because higher prey density and current-driven baitfall create more frequent feeding opportunities than uniform abyssal plains. The available evidence cannot confirm or reject that idea with just two data points, but the fact that both sightings occurred on sloped terrain rather than flat abyssal seafloor is consistent with the notion that topographic features matter for this species’ hunting strategy.
The different platforms also reveal complementary strengths in deep-sea observation. ROVs can follow an animal for longer stretches and adjust camera angles in real time, but their lights and thrusters may alter behavior. Baited landers are passive and quiet, capturing whatever approaches over many hours, but they record only a fixed frame. In this case, the ROV video delivered a serendipitous glimpse of a shark crossing a seamount flank, while the lander footage documented a purposeful approach to a food source. Together, they bracket two ends of the species’ behavioral spectrum: transit and targeted foraging.
What the footage reveals about goblin shark ecology
Even limited clips can hint at ecological roles. The goblin shark’s elongated snout, lined with electroreceptors, is thought to help it detect the faint electrical fields of buried or slow-moving prey. Seeing the animal sweep that snout just above the sediment supports the idea that it hunts fishes and invertebrates associated with the seafloor. The body posture, with pectoral fins slightly flared and tail beats measured, suggests a slow cruising speed punctuated by sudden lunges-behavior that matches earlier lab-based interpretations of its extreme jaw extension.
The Tonga Trench sighting, in particular, underscores the species’ tolerance for high pressure and low light at nearly 2,000 meters. While goblin sharks have been captured from a range of depths, direct confirmation that they actively forage on trench slopes helps refine models of vertical habitat use. It also raises questions about how individuals move between features such as seamounts, continental margins, and trenches, and whether they follow prey migrations or rely on more static feeding grounds.
From a conservation perspective, the new records arrive as deep-sea mining and fishing pressures intensify on slopes and seamounts. Goblin sharks are not a targeted commercial species, but they appear in bycatch and may be vulnerable to habitat disruption. Knowing that they use specific types of sloped terrain for hunting gives regulators and scientists a clearer basis for assessing potential impacts from bottom-contact gear and industrial development in these zones.
Gaps in goblin shark science that two sightings cannot close
Two observations, separated by five years and thousands of kilometers, represent a dramatic advance for a species with almost no behavioral record. But they also expose how little is known. Neither recording includes precise prey identification. The environmental variables at each site, such as water temperature, oxygen levels, and current speed, have not been published in detail beyond the depth figure of 1,997 meters for the Tonga Trench encounter. Without that context, scientists cannot yet determine what draws goblin sharks to specific patches of seafloor versus others.
The archival discovery model that produced the 2019 sighting raises its own questions. Deep-sea ROV programs generate thousands of hours of video each year. If a goblin shark went unnoticed in publicly available footage for years, other rare species almost certainly sit unidentified in similar archives. Systematic review of existing deep-sea video, rather than new expeditions alone, could yield additional records, but that work requires trained taxonomists with time and funding to watch the footage and cross-reference it with museum specimens and genetic data.
Methodologically, the sample size is still too small to support firm conclusions about population density or movement patterns. The Inkfish expedition’s more than 50 days of continuous footage produced just one sighting, which suggests that even targeted deep-sea sampling campaigns will need large time investments to build a meaningful behavioral dataset. It is not yet clear whether goblin sharks are genuinely rare or simply very good at avoiding the limited fields of view offered by cameras.
Future work will likely combine several approaches: expanded baited-lander networks across seamounts and trenches, more systematic mining of archival ROV footage, and occasional use of environmental DNA to detect goblin shark presence in water samples even when cameras miss them. Each additional verified record will help fill in the species’ life history, from preferred depth bands and diet to possible breeding grounds. For now, the two new videos mark a turning point, transforming the goblin shark from a mostly hypothetical deep-sea oddity into a real, observed predator in one of Earth’s least accessible habitats.
More from Morning Overview
*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
