Rare Greenland shark found off the coast of Belize: 'Sheer luck'
The half-blind shark was found in a rare location by local fishermen
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A Greenland shark was found at a coral reef off the coast of Belize.
The shark, known as an "enigma to science," is half-blind and normally lives in the freezing Arctic and North Atlantic oceans.
Devanshi Kasana, a biologist and Ph.D. candidate at Florida International University’s Predator Ecology and Conservation lab, was reportedly fishing together with other local fishermen when the group caught this shark.
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The fishermen were performing the last check on their lines for the day when they snagged this smooth stone, blue-eyed shark, as Fox Weather reported.
This Greenland shark was found off the coast of Belize — a rare location for the cold-water shark. (Devanshi Kasana)
"At first, I was sure it was something else, like a six-gill shark that are well known from deep waters off coral reefs," said Kasana, who together with colleagues published a piece about the shark's capture in the science journal Marine Biology in July.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I knew it was something unusual, and so did the fishers, who hadn’t seen anything quite like it in all their combined years of fishing," she also reportedly said.
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After conferring with the Sharks & Rays Conservation Research director at Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota, Fla., it was determined that this creature was most likely a Greenland shark.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Due to its larger size, it could also be a Greenland shark and a Pacific sleeper shark hybrid.
Local Belizean fishermen were out searching for tiger sharks when they stumbled on the Greenland shark. (iStock)
Regardless, this find was incredibly rare.
A Greenland shark has been known to live upward of 500 years — making these sharks the longest-living vertebrate known to science.
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The sharks can live for so long due to their slow speed of life.
They grow approximately a third of an inch per year and can get to more than 20 feet in length.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A Greenland shark swims in the northern Atlantic Ocean. (iStock) (iStock)
Kasana said the nearly 9,500-foot-deep waters off the coast of Belize were deep and cold enough for a Greenland shark to thrive.
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"If we were to catch another individual it would be sheer luck, we don’t set our lines in a way that targets Greenland sharks," Kasana said, as NPR reported.