An unbelievable discovery has been made beneath Antarctica. Experts say that certain species cannot be found across the region, of course, because of the climate and conditions. However, one person recently made a shocking discovery in the scheduled region.
In January 2025, a camera operated by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre was positioned off the South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula, and it happened to pick up the movement of a sleeper shark. Researcher and marine biologist Alan Jamieson said this week that he did not expect to see « a hunk of a shark » in the deep waters.
Mr Jamieson said: « 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. »
The huge predator was caught swimming in waters 490 metres deep, at a temperature of 1.27C. According to the biologist, who is also the founding director of the University of Western Australia-based research centre, he found no record of another shark in the Antarctic Ocean, reports ABC News.
Peter Kyne, a Charles Darwin University conservation biologist independent of the research centre, also says that a shark had never before been recorded so far south.
It is believed that the rare spotting could be due to climate change. The warming oceans could be driving the sharks to the Southern Hemisphere’s colder waters.
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Though Mr Kyne also highlighted that climate change could play a role, there is limited information on range changes in the region due to its remoteness.
It is a possibility that the slow sleeper sharks could have been in Antarctica without knowledge, and therefore being able to capture this one was « quite significant », Mr Kyne noted. « This is great. The shark was in the right place, the camera was in the right place and they got this great footage. »
Mr Jameison said that the shark maintained a depth of around 500 metres along the seabed because it was the warmest layer of several layers stacked on top of each other.
The Antarctic Ocean is heavily stratified to a depth of approximately 1,000 meters because of conflicting properties: colder, denser water from below does not readily mix with fresh water from melting ice above.
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