Rare Shark filmed near underwater volcano
An ocean engineer and National Geographic Explorer Brennan Philips and his team tried to explore the active underwater volcano in Kavachi located near the Solomon Islands.
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| A Pacific Sleeper Shark was caught on cam |
When a National Geographic team dropped an 80-pound camera into an active volcano beneath the South Pacific Ocean, they expected to see unique geology and hydrothermal activity. What they didn't necessarily expect to see were sharks -- but that's exactly what their camera picked up, as you can see in the video above.
While most of us only think of volcanoes as fire-spewing mountains above sea level, according to Oregon State University's Volcano World website, about 75 percent of the globe's annual output of magma comes from underwater -- or submarine -- volcanoes.
Brennan claims that he and his team left a surveillance camera near the volcano to observe what's happening to the sea creatures near the volcano.
Once the camera was brought back aboard and the data was downloaded, the team of researchers cheered as first a sixgill stingray, then a scalloped hammerhead shark and a silky shark swam into view.
Surprisingly, they were able to capture a rare type of Shark using the camera. They saw clearly in the footage the rare type of shark called the Pacific sleeper shark!
The researchers want to know how these species could seemingly not be affected by the hot temperatures and acidity of the water -- and what happens to them when Kavachi erupts.
Phillips says in the video, "When it's erupting, there's no way anything could live in there. And so to see large animals like this, that are living -- and potentially they could die at any moment -- it brings up lots of questions. Do they leave? Do they have some sort of sign that it's about to erupt? Do they blow up sky-high into little bits?"
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