First-Ever Shark Footage Captured In Antarctic Waters Stuns Marine Scientists
In January 2025, a deep-sea camera rolling in near-freezing darkness off Antarctica captured something no human had ever recorded before: a shark, estimated at 10 to 13 feet long, cruising through water barely two degrees above the freezing point of freshwater. The footage, recorded by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, represents the first-ever video of a shark in Antarctic waters — and it is forcing marine scientists to rethink a long-standing assumption that sharks simply do not inhabit the waters surrounding Earth’s southernmost continent.
The center gave The Associated Press permission to publish the images on Wednesday, Feb. 18. The camera was positioned off the South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula.
A ‘Hunk of a Shark’ at 1,608 Feet Deep
The shark was observed at a depth of 1,608 feet, where the water temperature was 34.29 degrees Fahrenheit. The specimen’s size made it a formidable presence in one of the planet’s most extreme environments.
Alan Jamieson, founding director of the University of Western Australia-based research center, was blunt about the surprise.
“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,” Jamieson said.
“And it’s not even a little one either. It’s a hunk of a shark. These things are tanks,” he added, per AP.
This was no fleeting shadow or ambiguous blur. It was a large, unmistakable predator moving through water that most experts had written off as too cold and too hostile for any shark species.
No Previous Record Exists
Jamieson 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 said. “It’s quite significant.”
The ocean is vast, cameras are few, and the window of opportunity in Antarctic waters is extremely narrow. The fact that this footage exists at all comes down to timing and placement.
Why Did the Shark Stay at That Specific Depth?
One of the most fascinating details involves the shark’s behavior. Jamieson said the photographed shark maintained a depth of around 1,640 feet along a seabed that sloped into deeper water. He said the shark remained at that depth because it was the warmest of several stacked water layers.
The Antarctic Ocean is stratified to a depth of around 3,280 feet due to colder, denser water below not readily mixing with freshwater from melting ice above. The ocean in this region is layered with different temperatures at different levels. The shark had apparently found the most hospitable band within that stack and was tracking it along the seafloor.
The footage also captured a skate, motionless on the seabed. Scientists already knew skates inhabit waters that far south, so the skate’s presence was unremarkable — but it provided a kind of baseline, a known creature in frame alongside an unprecedented one.
What Else Might Be Hiding In Antarctic Depths?
If a shark of this size has been living in Antarctic waters undetected, what else might be down there?
Jamieson said the sleeper shark population in the Antarctic Ocean is likely sparse and difficult for humans to detect. He expects other Antarctic sharks may live at similar depths, feeding on carcasses of whales, giant squids and other marine animals that sink to the seafloor.
The practical barriers to finding out are steep. Few research cameras are positioned at that depth in Antarctic waters, and they can operate only during the Southern Hemisphere summer months, from December through February. Scientists have eyes on these depths for only a small fraction of the year.
“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.
Three-quarters of the year, across one of the most mysterious ocean environments on Earth, the darkness, the cold and the crushing pressure make this region almost completely inaccessible to human observation.
Could Warming Oceans Be Involved?
Kyne raised another question. He said climate change and warming oceans could potentially be driving sharks toward colder Southern Hemisphere waters, but data on range changes near Antarctica is limited due to the region’s remoteness. He also said sleeper sharks could have been present in Antarctic waters without being detected.
That uncertainty matters. It would be tempting to draw a straight line from warming seas to this shark’s appearance, but the science does not yet support a definitive conclusion. The footage may represent a species that has quietly inhabited these waters for far longer than anyone realized, or it may signal a shift. Researchers do not have enough data to say.
Production of this article included the use of AI. It was reviewed and edited by a team of content specialists.
