A rare goblin shark was caught in fishing nets off the coast of Australia last week.
The unusual creature, called a living fossil, was accidentally snagged in nets of local fisherman hauling in crayfish,
The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
"We just winched up the wire and brought the net on and the shark was in the net," fisherman Lochlainn Kelly said, according to the newspaper. "I wasn't [freaked out], if anything I was pretty excited. I've seen photos of them before but I've never seen one before."
The fisherman took the goblin shark to the Wharf Aquarium.
Alan Scrymgeour from Sapphire Coast Marine Discovery Centre said the goblin shark is the only species in its genus, which stopped evolving about 70 million years ago, The Sydney Morning Herald said.
The sharks spend most of their time in deep waters about 3,000 to 4,000 feet. The shark caught by Kelly may have found its way into shallower water
because of changes in currents, the Merimbula News reported.
The shark will be transferred to the Australian Museum in Sydney.
“They are a very deep-water shark that has been rarely recorded from Australian waters,”
Michael McMaster, curator at the Wharf Aquarium, told GrindTV. “[It] does not mean that they are rare in the waters in which they live, it is just that very little fishing is done at the depth in which they live. Because so few have been studied very little is known about them.”
Twitter users were fascinated by the find, with one comparing it to Sunday's halftime show.
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