The Australian Museum was delighted to have received a Goblin Shark in the last few days.
What makes the rarely seen Goblin Shark so unusual is its bizarre ‘alien-like’ jaw mechanism. As its jaws close, two ligaments are stretched. The act of opening the mouth releases the tension on the ligaments resulting in the jaws being thrust forward.
One of the other weird-looking things about this shark is its long flattened snout, the lower side of which is covered with pores. These are the openings to the ‘ampullae of Lorenzini’, a sensory system that allows the electroreception of prey. Food items are believed to include fishes, octopuses, squids, shrimps and crabs. Sadly the gut of ‘our fish’ was empty, so we can’t describe its last meal.
The newly acquired specimen is a juvenile male of 1.26 m in length. It was caught by a commercial fisher off Eden in water several hundred metres deep.