Although many experts didn’t believe sharks resided in the freezing waters of Antarctica, a shark was recently spotted on camera. The shark was a large specimen, measuring an estimated 10 to 13 feet.

First Shark Ever Seen in Antarctica

“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,”  stated researcher Alan Jamieson.

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

The camera was positioned off the coast of the South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula. It was operated by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, which investigates life in the deepest parts of the world’s oceans.

The shark was spotted at a depth of 1,608 feet, where the water temperature is 34.29 degrees Fahrenheit.

Jamieson, the founding director of the University of Western Australia-based research center, said he could find no record of another shark found in the Antarctic Ocean. Peter Kyne, a Charles Darwin University conservation biologist independent of the research center, agreed that a shark had never before been recorded so far south.

“This is great. The shark was in the right place, the camera was in the right place and they got this great footage,” Kyne stated. “It’s quite significant.”

It’s most likely that the sleeper shark population in the Antarctic Ocean was just sparse and difficult to find, according to Jamieson. There are only a couple of research cameras positioned at this depth in Antarctic waters, and those that are can only operate during the Southern Hemisphere summer months (December through February).

Researchers believe that other sharks live at the same depth, feeding on whale carcasses, giant squids, and other marine creatures.

“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.