Sleeper shark filmed in Antarctic waters

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – A bulky shark drifted slowly over a desolate seabed, at a depth beyond the reach of sunlight, in a remarkable and unexpected encounter.

Sleeper shark filmed in Antarctic waters

Before the sleeper shark briefly and cautiously passed in front of a video camera, many specialists believed sharks did not inhabit Antarctica’s icy waters, researcher Alan Jamieson said this week.

Recorded in January 2025, the shark was a large individual estimated to measure between 3 and 4 metres (10 and 13 feet) long.

"We went down there not expecting to see sharks because there's a general rule of thumb that you don't get sharks in Antarctica," Jamieson said.

"And it's not even a little one either. It's a hunk of a shark. These things are tanks," he added.

The camera, run by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, was deployed off the South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula. The centre studies organisms living in the deepest regions of the world’s oceans.

The location lies well within the Antarctic Ocean, also called the Southern Ocean, which is defined as the waters south of latitude 60 degrees south.

On Wednesday, the centre authorised The Associated Press to publish the images.

A rare sight at 490 metres

The shark was filmed at a depth of 490 metres (1,608 feet), where the water was close to freezing at 1.27 degrees Celsius (34.29 degrees Fahrenheit).

A skate can be seen lying still on the seabed, apparently undisturbed as the shark passes. Scientists were not surprised by the skate, a shark relative resembling a stingray, because its distribution was already known to extend that far south.

Jamieson, founding director of the University of Western Australia-based research centre, said he had been unable to find any record of another shark being discovered in the Antarctic Ocean.

Peter Kyne, a Charles Darwin University conservation biologist with no connection to the research centre, agreed that no shark had previously been documented at such a southerly latitude.

Climate change and rising ocean temperatures could possibly be encouraging sharks to enter colder Southern Hemisphere waters, Kyne said. However, little information exists on range shifts near Antarctica because the area is so remote.

He said the slow-moving sleeper sharks may have inhabited Antarctic waters for a long time without being detected.

"This is great. The shark was in the right place, the camera was in the right place and they got this great footage," Kyne said. "It's quite significant."

Antarctic Ocean layers may shelter sharks

According to Jamieson, sleeper sharks in the Antarctic Ocean are probably thinly distributed and therefore hard for people to find.

The shark in the images was holding to a depth of about 500 metres (1,640 feet) above a seabed that descended into much deeper water. Jamieson said it remained at that level because it was the warmest of several layers of water stacked between the seabed and the surface.

The Antarctic Ocean is strongly layered, or stratified, down to roughly 1,000 metres (3,280 feet). This results from opposing properties, including colder, denser water beneath that does not easily mix with fresh water flowing from melting ice above.

Jamieson expects that other Antarctic sharks live at a similar depth, scavenging the remains of whales, giant squid and other marine animals that die and sink to the seafloor.

Only a small number of research cameras are placed at that particular depth in Antarctic waters. The cameras that are available can operate solely during the Southern Hemisphere summer, from December to February.

"The other 75% of the year, no one's looking at all. And so this is why, I think, we occasionally come across these surprises," Jamieson said.