Saturday, April 26, 2008

Strange Sharks-Photoshop? No Way!

We get quite a few emails from blog readers each week. Some with images like this one, others with offers for cheap V!@gara delivered to your door.

This particular image was sent in from Sarah who lives in the U.K-wanting us to identify this unlikely looking critter.

At first we said "Unicorn Shark?"

Then it occurred that this critter had to be a deep water species, and if there's anything we know about deep water sharks (we know a fair bit) anything is likely down there.

Here's what we found out about this shark:

Almost nothing except about 300 posts, arguments, half stories, wild rumors and the like. Seems this critter has generated a lot of talk and is perhaps from Japan.

Whatever this critter is, we hope it gets to be about 20 feet long and shows up on our chum line one of these days. If that happens we'll probably need a handful of that cheap V!@gara.

1 comment:

the One called "Bitey"... said...

Hazarding a (nearly) blind guess, I'd say it's a fetal whaleshark - the "horn" looks like an egg tooth, and the patterns across the back look very whalesharky...
Aside form that, I would guess it's a spiny dogfish (again noting the spots and ridges, but also noting the dorsal spine), and the "horn" is again an egg tooth.
But who can say, I'm no elasmobranchologist.....