Originally published: The Greenland Shark Can Outlast Nuclear Waste. Will It? - Edge Effects, June 2020
The Greenland shark is surely one of nature’s great mysteries. A slow-moving creature growing up to 5.5 meters long, it is the largest fish in the Arctic. When wrenched from the icy waters, it is like a slab of granite: cigar-shaped, but with strangely flabby skin. It is often afflicted by an unsightly parasite that dangles from its eyes, gradually consuming its cornea and turning the shark progressively blind. Very little is known about how it breeds and eats, but seal, reindeer, and even polar bear body parts have been found in its stomach.
The cold depths of the planet’s north are what the Greenland shark calls home. It is mostly found in the waters around eastern Canada and the USA, Iceland, Greenland, and Norway, and seems to prefer depths of between 150–800 meters (although it can go much deeper), where it is sometimes caught by longline fishing. Unlike some other deep-water species, whose swim bladders distend with changes in water pressure, the Greenland shark’s body shape is undistorted by its long journey to the surface. It remains preserved as it was, far below, and emerges in its full, strange glory.
Main image: A Greenland shark, via Wikimedia Commons.
