Scientists have captured the first-ever footage of live goblin sharks swimming freely in the deep ocean, according to a study led by a University of Hawai'i at Mānoa research team. The findings, published in the Journal of Fish Biology, mark a breakthrough for a species previously known to humans only through specimens accidentally hauled up on fishing lines.
Until now, every documented sighting of a living goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) came from animals caught by fishers and briefly observed before they died. The new study instead reports two encounters with healthy sharks in their own environment: one near a seamount close to Jarvis Island in the Central Pacific, and another along the slope of the Tonga Trench.
Goblin sharks are often called "living fossils" because they are the last surviving members of a shark lineage stretching back nearly 125 million years. The two new sightings not only confirm the species survives undisturbed in the wild but also significantly extend both its known geographic range and the depths at which it lives.
"Seeing the most iconic of all the deep-sea sharks alive and looking healthy in its natural habitat is a unique honor," said Aaron Judah, the study's lead author and a doctoral candidate at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. He noted that the Tonga Trench sighting occurred nearly 700 meters deeper than the species had previously been recorded — a new depth record for the entire order of Lamniformes, the mackerel sharks that also include the great white, basking shark and mako.
An Overlooked Clip and a New Expedition
The Jarvis Island sighting emerged from archived footage. In 2025, Judah learned from colleagues that a possible goblin shark had been recorded during a 2019 Ocean Exploration Trust expedition aboard the E/V Nautilus, which surveyed deep-sea habitats around Kingman Reef, Palmyra Atoll and Jarvis Island within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The remotely operated vehicle Hercules had captured the footage during a livestreamed dive, and after reviewing the archived recordings, Judah confirmed the animal was indeed a goblin shark. "I was shocked to hear this because this species was not to be known to be in the Central Pacific," he said.
The second sighting came from a 2024 expedition to the Tonga Trench aboard the R/V Dagon, part of the Inkfish Open Ocean Expedition led by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Center. A baited camera on a bottom lander recorded the shark swimming freely.
"The Goblin Shark is one of these deep-sea charismatic animals that I never thought we'd see alive, and then to do so was amazing," said Alan Jamieson, the center's founding director and a study co-author.
Judah said the results underscore the value of traditional natural history research in the deep ocean. With the species' range now confirmed to extend further than previously documented, it can be formally added to regional biodiversity assessments — a status it lacked before these observations.