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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Ruth Leeney

I’m obsessed with deep-sea sharks: I felt intrigued by how strange they looked

A long thin fish with big eyes in a black background
A cookiecutter or cigar shark (Isistius brasiliensis), off Hawaii. Found in water 2.3 miles (3.7km) deep, they rise to the surface at dusk and descend again at dawn. Photograph: Blue Planet/Alamy

Three years ago I was running a research project from a bottom trawler off Namibia about deep-sea sharks – all of which live under enormous water pressure, close to the seafloor and are rarely seen by humans.

These sharks were being brought up in the trawler’s nets. By the time they were brought to the surface, they had experienced such a dramatic change in pressure that they had undergone barotrauma, so they were internally damaged and unlikely to survive.

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