A team of marine experts in the United Kingdom accidentally caught a bizarre alien-looking shark while trawling for marine life along the Scottish coast.
Marine biologist Francis Neat and his colleagues were conducting a survey off the coast of St. Kilda when they spotted the animal in their boat's trawl. Despite being surprised at the sight of the creature, they quickly weighed and measure it before they sent it back into the ocean.
The sea creature was identified as a false catshark (Pseudotriakis microdon), a pudgy, slow-moving species of ground shark endemic to the deep waters of western and eastern Atlantic. It measured around 3 meters (9 feet and 8 inches) long and weighed at 60 kilograms (132 pounds).
Neat said that this rare denizen of the deep has not been spotted in British waters for 10 years.
The recently caught false catshark, also known as sofa shark, was described as having a broad head with narrow eyes and a large mouth on a short, rounded snout. It resembled an enormous blobfish, with large skin flaps located on anterior rims of its nostrils.
"It's a big and baggy looking creature," Neat said. "It looks a lot like a soft, discarded sofa when it's just lying there."
The association of the sea creature with a sofa stems from its soft body features, including flabby muscles and a large oily liver that makes up 25 percent of the shark's total body weight.
The false catshark's liver allows it to easily hover over the ocean floor. While the sea creature is primarily known as a predator, it is also capable of scavenging for food. Its small yet sharp teeth allow this ground shark species to feed on bony marine creatures, such as the grenadier, snake mackerel, cutthroat eel, octopus, squid and lanternshark.
It can also eat pufferfish, frigate mackerel and needlefish when it goes scavenging.
A representative from the Scottish Shark Tagging program said that the rare shark species is a valued addition to their list of marine creatures.
Experts have not seen this specific type of shark in Scottish waters before, and that it is great to include it to their extensive list of known species in the country.
The program representative recounted how they were once told that there were only 32 various shark types in the waters of Scotland. However, they discovered in the past year that there are actually 72 species, many of which are found in deeper parts of the ocean.
