A rare frilled shark was caught off the coast of Australia in a fishing trawler. This rarely spotted living fossil dates back 80 million years with a face that won't win it any beauty contests and looks like something that might come out of a Hollywood horror film.
"It's a freaky thing," chief executive officer at South East Trawl Fishing Association, Simon Boag says. "I don't think you would want to show it to little children before they went to bed."
David Guillot was the fisherman who caught this ancient shark while he was fishing for sea perch. "The head on it was like something out of a horror movie. It was quite horrific looking. ... It was quite scary actually," Guillot says.
"It was really prehistoric-looking, freaky really."
The shark can reach about six feet in length and has a body that is reminiscent of an eel, with three fins on its back. It gets its name from the six pairs of gill slits that give it a fringed appearance. Inside its jaws are 25 rows of needle shaped teeth that scientists believe are used to capture its prey by bending its body much like a snake.
This particular shark was almost as large as they grow and was caught at 2,296 feet below the surface, well above the usual depths than it is usually found. "This guy was just unlucky" Boag says. Boag told ABC that is was the first time in living memory that a frilled shark had been sighted.
"I've been at sea for 30 years and I've never seen a shark that looks like that," Guillot says. "It was like a large eel, probably 1.5 meters [5 feet] long, and the body was quite different to any other shark I'd ever seen. Honestly, we thought we had caught a brand new species, maybe discovered something wild."
The shark is known to live at extreme depths in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. However, it is rarely caught by fishermen as most of the areas of its habitat are off limits to fishing.
Unsure with what he could do with it, Guillot offered the shark to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organization in Australia, but the organization declined the offer because it already had a specimen. After being turned down, it is believed that Guillot has since sold the rarely seen shark.
