A goblin shark, one of the ocean's most elusive creatures, has been filmed alive in the deep sea for the first time. Until now, every known video of a live goblin shark came only after the animal was accidentally caught on a fishing line and hauled to the surface, where it typically died soon afterward. Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa have changed that, capturing two healthy specimens in their natural habitat.
A 125 million year old shark breaks its own depth record
The team documented one goblin shark near a seamount close to Jarvis Island and another along the slope of the Tonga Trench. The Tonga Trench sighting was nearly 700 meters deeper than the species was previously known to live, setting a new depth record not just for goblin sharks but for the entire order of Lamniformes, which includes great white sharks, basking sharks, and mako sharks. Goblin sharks are the sole surviving members of a shark family that dates back roughly 125 million years, often described as living fossils.
A chance conversation led to a hidden discovery
The first observation came to light in 2025 when lead author Aaron Judah, a doctoral candidate at the university's Deep Sea Fish Ecology Lab, spoke with colleagues who mentioned a possible goblin shark recorded during a 2019 expedition aboard the E/V Nautilus. That expedition explored deep sea ecosystems around Kingman Reef, Palmyra Atoll, and Jarvis Island within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Judah was shocked because the species was not known to inhabit the Central Pacific. The sightings greatly expand the shark's known geographic range, which was previously limited to regions off the western United States, Australia, and Japan in the Pacific, along with small areas of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
These two encounters, published in the Journal of Fish Biology, show that a creature that has lurked in the deep for 125 million years still has secrets left to reveal.
