Goblin sharks just like goblins are stuff people wouldn't really believe in unless they see one, and lucky for us commercial fisher Carl Moore caught one of these extremely rare shark species for us to know that they really exist.
Just last week, Moore went out for a typical working day by the sea, but after netting a very unusual fish just south of Key West, Florida, there's no denying that he made caught a big catch.
By just looking at the odd creature, Carl Moore knew that it was not a typical catch. In fact, it was only when the Georgia angler photographed the mysterious fish when its identity was confirmed. It was actually a goblin shark, and interestingly, it was the second of such specimen ever caught in the Gulf of Mexico.
After Moore closely examined the mysterious catch and took a series of photos of it, he released it back into the ocean and contacted the authorities from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service.
According to Research Biologist for NOAA John Carson these goblin sharks are so rarely encountered that any information about them is eagerly devoured by researchers.
"We don't know how long they live; we don't know how often they reproduce, or even how big they are when they reproduce," Carlson, who specializes in sharks, said. "They're a mystery."
Moore said that he thought the goblin shark was about 18 feet long. However, when Carlson and his colleagues examined Moore's photos, they estimated that it has to be 15 feet long.
Additionally, NOAA also made an inference on the fish's sex. Carlson said that while female sharks do not have two fin-like appendages near the tail, male goblin sharks do since they need this in holding on to females while mating.
"From the photographs, we don't see those, so we're suspecting it's a female," Carlson said.
Goblin sharks are usually found between 2,000 and 3,000 feet deep, but Moore said that he caught the shark at around 2,000 feet deep only. These creatures are one of the deepest occurring species among sharks and their relatives, National Geographic reported.
Unlike the typical shark, goblin sharks have flat, blade-like snout and a very unusually shaped head, which according to experts, provide them an advantage in the gloomy deep.
Carlson said sharks have a series of sensors in their head called ampullae of Lorenzini, and in the goblin shark's case, these sensors are distributed along the long, flat blade, extending the radius in which this type of sharks could detect their prey.
Tracing the previous appearances of goblin sharks, the first sighting in the Gulf of Mexico was in 2000. But before that, another goblin shark was spotted in the North Atlantic in the 1970s off the Bahamas.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
