More Amazing Sea Life From Japan

More news of weird sea creatures from Japan (another beast here). This time, it’s a frilled shark, an animal normally found in the deep sea. Frilled sharks have very rarely been seen doing their thing in the wild. They have been pulled up in bottom trawls, but this NOAA report on a 2004 deep-sea submersible dive to around 3,000 feet claims video from the dive shows the “first time anyone had ever seen the rare species in its natural habitat.” So this is truly a rare sight. Here’s the brand new footage from Japan.

Reuters reports that the animal was spotted by a fisherman and then captured by workers at a marine park, and that the video was taken in a shallow sea-water pool. The shark doesn’t seem to be doing so well. It looks bent out of shape, swollen around the gills, and cloudy in the eyes. Maybe that is why it was so near the surface? The Reuters story says that the animal died a few hours later.

Nevertheless, it is nice video of an awesome creature. As I noted in the squid post, though, I wonder about the music in the background. Is this normal Japanese news procedure? Not knowing any Japanese myself, I have no idea where this video comes from.

[Aside: To follow up on an idea from another previous post, it has been suggested that the long, eel-like frilled shark could be responsible for old reports of sea serpents.]