Goblin Shark
In 1897, David Star Jordan a famous American Ichthyologist of the time was presented with a most bizarre looking shark.
A Goblin Shark in the tank area
Jason Armstrong
© Australian Museum
The shark had been secured by Mr Allen Owston from a fisherman who had caught it in deep water near Yokohama, Japan. Owston brought the specimen to the University of Tokyo placing it in the care of Professor Kakichi Mitsukuri. Mitsukuri took the specimen with him to the United States where he was attending an International Fur Seal Conference and requested Jordan identify and describe it. The specimen, a 1.7m young male became the type specimen of a completely new family of lamnoid sharks, which Jordan named Mitsukurinidae in honour of the Japanese Professor. He gave the shark the species name Mitsukurina owstoni in 1898.
The common name Goblin Shark comes from the name given to the shark by the 19th century Japanese fishermen from Odawara, where the sharks were often caught. The fisherman called them 'tengu-zame' which translates as 'goblin' or 'elfin' shark. Allen Owston reported that the Goblin Sharks were most often caught in spring from a bank (underwater mass) 94.6 m deep, with depths of 540-720 m close by. Females were mostly caught, and it is believed they moved onto the bank to breed. The fishermen caught the sharks in nets, extracted oil from the liver and used the flesh for fertilizer.
In the 105 years since its initial description, less than 50 specimens of Goblin Sharks have been recorded from scattered localities in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, with the majority of captures reported from Japan. The sharks are usually caught in bottom trawls at depths up to 1200 m.
A 3.84 m male was captured off Sydney in 1983. The Fisheries Research Vessel Kapala caught this large specimen in a trawl at a depth of 960 m. The specimen was measured, dissected and cast. The head, tail, fins and claspers (organs used to transfer sperm from the male to the female shark during mating) are now held in the fish collection of the Australian Museum. The Museum also holds three other specimens, the most recent caught off Bermagui, New South Wales, in 2000.
Little is known about the behaviour of the Goblin Shark, however, with 50 or so specimens held in museums around the world, Icthyologists are slowly beginning to understand more about the biology of these unusual animals and their deepsea home.
Link to factsheet:
Goblin Shark
Mark McGrouther
, Collection Manager, Ichthyology
Last Updated:
Tags Collection stories, shark, ichthyology, collection, science,
4 comments
Hi genty 55. Thank you very much for your comment. You are quite correct. The New South Wales specimen is no longer the largest. I just spoke with my colleague Alastair Graham at the CSIRO Ichthyology Collection in Hobart. They have the head of a 3.9 m long Goblin Shark (H 6928-01). This is presumably the fish to which you referred. It was collected at a depth around 550 m, south-west of Sandy Cape, off the west coast of Tasmania on 30 July 2004. I have updated the page appropriately. Thanks for alerting me to the existence of this specimen. I must confess that I am curious to hear how you became aware of it.
Hi again. Thanks for your reply. I was hoping that you would say you were involved in the capture of the fish. That's really cool. Well done working out what it was. Do you or anyone else who was on board the Rock Fish 1 have images of the fish? If so, I would be very keen to see them. You can contact me through the website here. I'll suggest that Alastair Graham from CSIRO looks at this page. He may have questions for you. Thanks again.