Staff at the Australian Museum have gleefully shown off their recent addition, Merimbula’s ‘alien of the deep’.
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The unusual looking goblin shark was caught by local fisherman Mike Kelly when he was trawling South East of Gabo Island on Thursday, January 29.
The shark is usually found in water as deep as 900 metres but this one was caught from a depth of about 600 metres.
The goblin shark is often considered to be a living fossil as it belongs to an “evolutionary dead end”, being the only species in its genus, which stopped evolving about 70 million years ago, during the dinosaur era.
The body of the bizarre creature was donated to the Australian Museum by Michael McMaster of Merimbula Aquarium.
Museum ichthyology collection manager Mark McGrouther said that he had only ever seen three goblin sharks before, all of which are at the museum.
"They are not encountered terribly often, and when they do come here it's a very special day," he said.
The specimen is believed to be only two to three years old, given its length of approximately 1.2m. Adult goblin sharks grow to a length of 3.8m.
Goblin sharks got their nickname ‘alien of the deep' due to their bizarre alien like jaw mechanism as well as their distinctive flattened snout which is covered in electroreceptors which they use to find their prey.
The Australian Museum will retain only the head and various organs of the shark.
