Thousands of sharks were covering the seafloor ‘like a carpet,’ Australia video shows
A robotic camera sent to the seafloor off southern Australia discovered thousands of sleeping sharks so tightly packed that they resembled “a carpet” hundreds of feet in size, the National Environmental Science Program reported.
The “extraordinary discovery” was made 213-feet down in the Great Southern Reef, wedged between Australia and Tasmania, officials said.
Expedition leader Jacquomo Monk identified the species as Port Jackson sharks and likened the discovery to “finding a needle in a haystack.”
“We don’t know the reason for this but we’re hypothesizing, or guessing in plain language, that this is is an area where the sharks come together to either breed or indeed fatten up before they had off to place like Jarvis Bay in New South Wales and coastal areas along Victoria where they lay their eggs,” Monk said in a video shared on Facebook.
“We’re talking hundreds of meters maximum in size, yet thousands of sharks tightly packed like a carpet across the sea floor. A very, very exciting moment when we managed to traverse over these sharks.”
The mystery deepened, he said, when researchers realized the sharks were all females.
That poses more questions than answers, Monk said.
Port Jackson sharks grow to about 5.5 feet in length and are known for their “distinctive blunt head” and harness-like markings, the Australian Museum reports. The sharks are not a threat to humans and prefer the seafloor in rocky environments. They are known to forage for food at night and sleep by day, experts say.
The gathering of sharks was found inside the 1,819-square-mile Beagle Marine Park. Scientists believe the spot “is vital for their life cycle.”
Researchers visited the site in mid-August because a 2018 expedition had revealed evidence of a shark aggregation site, Monk said.
“Divers often see these sharks ... in gatherings of two, three, maybe five ... occasionally 10. To see them in hundreds to thousands aggregated in one area is really quite special,” Monk said.