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A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 600 metres or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week.

The Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, was alerted by a fisherman at a nearby port on Sunday that he had spotted an odd-looking eel-like creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

Marine park staff caught the 1.6-metre-long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a "living fossil" because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times.

The shark appeared to be in poor condition when park staff moved it to a seawater pool where they filmed it swimming and opening its jaws.

"We believe moving pictures of a live specimen are extremely rare," said an official at the park. "They live between 600 and 1000 metres under the water, which is deeper than humans can go."

"We think it may have come close to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters," the official said.

The shark died a few hours after being caught.

Frilled sharks, which feed on other sharks and sea creatures, are sometimes caught in the nets of trawlers but are rarely seen alive.

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Blimey, that's a strange looking thing. Just goes to show how little we know about our own planet. Never understood why we put so much money into space travel when we know next to nothing about the sea.

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It's coming...

Totally. Remember the sunfish I posted a while back? Now that was awesome. Imagine seeing these beauties up close omg.

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Oh wow, I agree though, I think we should spend more time viewing the full ecosystems underneath us as opposed to the nothingness of space.

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Well they're not new, as they've been documented and seen before. I dislike how they feel that they need to capture everything to study it. In this case it seemed to have aided the shark in dying.
Bleh.

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Evisceration is a sign of respect.

Yeah I noticed that, not cool scientist people, not cool.

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There's a video on CNN.com of it.

Check out the gills - They're fully inflated and very red, meaning that fish was having a very hard time before it died, and would undoubtedly have died anyway.

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I'm not the only one that thought that? Good. I was afraid if I said so people would eat me xD Regardless if it helped it to die or not, I wonder if it came up to the surface to die.. poor little thing.

I can't believe how it looks so ancient though! Wows. Things in the ocean sure are amazingly different, huh.

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It's a real shame it died

Why meddle with it anyway? Why couldn't they just leave it?

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"I am a sly cat, I am a summer wind, I am birds in flight, I am the sun, I am the sea, I am me!"

Neo account: ginger23456

Weird looking, but wickedly sweet.

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Gone.

Because it was going to die in the first place. It's found at depths of 2k+ feet- it's just not adapted to live in shallow water.



They may or may not have aided in speeding up its death, I don't know, but due to its 'rarely being seen alive', the fact that it was caught on tape could be useful.

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can't find the sig from this set, so instead, you get a .

I can see why it was hiding... it's, uh, ugly.

I feel bad for it, since it died, though.

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If she was going to die anyway, I think it's just as well that we learned something about her. Maybe we can figure out how to keep more of them alive.

She was strangely beautiful, though.

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Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. - Samuel Clemens

Ever seen an Angler fish?
now that's a face only a mother can love.

Sharky up there reminds me of something, but I cannot for the life of me place what.
I dunno, I'm sure it will come to me at some absolutely inappropriate time.

That remindes me of a huge Japanese Loach.

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Set by the amazing Kitten Medli.
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