Giant forgotten ‘sleeper’ shark has been haunting UK waters for 400 years
The rarely seen Greenland ‘sleeper’ shark has been prowling in deep, cold UK waters since the 1600s and is the longest living vertebrate on Earth
A giant shark has been quietly haunting the deep seas around Britain since Shakespear(Image: Getty Images/Image Source)
A giant shark has been quietly haunting the deep seas around Britain since Shakespeare first hit the stage. And one of its relatives in the Arctic right now could have been born in the 1600s.
According to scientists, the Greenland shark is the longest-living vertebrate on Earth, with some individuals estimated to be around 400 years old.
A landmark 2016 study in the journal Science analysed a large female Greenland shark and calculated her median birth year at around 1627. That means she could have been cruising through black, icy water before mathematician Isaac Newton was even born in 1643.
Greenland shark in 2017(Image: PA)
And she’d already been ancient history by the time the United States declared independence in 1776. The oldest shark studied was estimated at between 272 and 512 years old – meaning on the upper end she could have been alive in the 1500s, while Shakespeare was still writing.
Greenland sharks can live so long because they prowl the near-freezing, pitch-black depths of the Arctic and North Atlantic, where their metabolism is so slow they grow by just about one centimetre a year, Space Daily reported. Scientists believe they don’t even reach adulthood until roughly 150 years old.
Sharks don’t have hard bones with growth rings either, so scientists used radiocarbon dating on the lenses of their eyes to calculate their age. The proteins at the centre form before birth and never change, which therefore acts like a built-in biological time capsule, according to the Guardian.
Greenland shark under ice in Canada(Image: Getty Images/WaterFrame RM)
The species of Greenland sharks, the Somniosus microcephalus, means “sleepy tiny-head”. It is part of the sleeper shark family, which includes around 20 species.
They can grow up to 21 feet (6.4m) and more than 2,200 pounds (1,000kg). They’re also in UK waters.
They are the largest shark species found in British seas, reaching up to 7 metres (23 feet). They lurk in deep, cold trenches off Scotland and northern England, rarely seen because they stay thousands of feet down.
512 year old shark born before Shakespeare (Image: juniel85/Instagram)
They don’t often head into southern waters because the surface is too warm, but the deep seabed can stay cold enough for them to travel further south than many people think.
Nevertheless, a dead “ginormous” Greenland shark washed up in Newlyn, Cornwall, with experts estimating it could have been 300 to 500 years old, the BBC reported in April.
Others have been found on the northeast coast in Northumberland. In 2022, a rare 2-metre male washed ashore in Sligo, Ireland, collected by scientists to study its heart and eyes for clues to extreme longevity, Oceanographic reported.
Despite their size, they’re not a threat to swimmers. They’re nicknamed sleeper sharks because they move in sluggish slow motion to conserve energy, and they live far too deep for beachgoers or everyday divers to ever cross paths with them.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.
