FRANCE: Marine biologists working off the coast of the Philippines have captured an image of an incredibly elusive sight — a free-swimming oceanic shark giving birth.
Dr. Simon Oliver from The University of Chester said this was one of the most exciting moments of his career.
“We were doing a standard survey – out every day, making observations. One of [our team] is a photographer – Attila Kaszo. He took the picture of the shark, and when he processed the image and showed it to me, I freaked out. It looks like this area is not just a cleaning station, which is already massively essential, it’s also serving as a pupping ground. We’ve seen lots of [pregnant] females there, so I don’t think this is a one-off.”
Dr. Oliver, who specializes in studying the thresher sharks at a seamount, or undersea mountain, in the Philippines, says it shows how important the study site to this vulnerable species. This particular seamount is a shark cleaning station, meaning the sharks purposefuly go there to have parasites nibbled away by smaller fish called cleaner wrasse.
Dr. Oliver is not the only researched completely astounded by the photograph. Dr Simon Thorrold, a senior scientist from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, US, described the photograph, which has now been published in the journal Coral Reefs, as “amazing”, as reported by bbc news.
“I have never seen a comparable image for any other pelagic shark. It may well be, or at least the first time that the event has been photographed, but this is always difficult to say definitively.”
According to Dr. Oliver, the shark seemed to behave a bit like humans while giving birth, swimming back and forth aimlessly as though in distress. The small feeder fish were feeding at the shark’s cloaca, or birth canal. They observed the shark for approximately fifteen minutes from fifteen meters away, but were unsure at the time what they were observing and photographing.
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