A rare frilled shark has been caught by fisherman has been caught by trawler fisherman near Lakes Entrance in Victoria, south-eastern Australia.
The fisherman that caught the shark described it to radio station 3AW as “something of of a horror movie”, and said it tried to snap at a deckhand who tried to pick it up.
The frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus), often described as a “living fossil” as it is one of two species of shark in a family that has existed for 80 million years, gains its name from its six pairs of frill-like gills.
It grows up to 2m in length and has a wide but patchy distribution in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and is rarely seen. It is normally found over the outer continental shelf and upper continental slope near the bottom of the ocean at depths of around 1,200m.
The frilled shark has an eel-like body, and is believed to capture its prey by bending its body and lunging like a snake, using its long, flexible jaws with 300 needle-shaped teeth aligned in 25 rows to swallow its prey whole.
