Specimens of a new species of ghost shark have been discovered on the Chatham Plateau, an area of the Pacific Ocean stretching more than 1,000km east of New Zealand, a team of researchers from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in Wellington reported.
Ghost sharks, also called Australasian narrow-nose chimaeras, are related to sharks and rays and have a cartilaginous skeleton. They feed on crustaceans at depths of up to some 2,600 m in the Pacific Ocean.
“Ghost sharks like this one are essentially confined to the ocean floor,” said researcher Brit Finucci, who named the species “Harriotta avia” after her grandmother. “Their habitat makes them difficult to study and monitor, which means we don’t know much about their life cycle or their endangered species classification, but that makes discoveries like this one even more exciting,” she said.
This ghost shark was previously considered to be part of a single species worldwide, before researchers discovered genetic and morphological differences from its cousins.
