Fisherman netted rare shark in the Oslofjord

Bluntnose sixgill shark OslofjordBluntnose sixgill shark. Photo: Fishes of Australia

Fisherman netted rare shark in the Oslofjord

A fisherman hoped he had caught a halibut in his net, but had to raise his eyebrows when he pulled up a rare Bluntnose sixgill shark outside Nesodden in Oslofjorden on Friday.

 

– I first saw something big and white beneath the surface and hoped it was a halibut. When I saw that something else, I thought it was a basking shark, says fisherman Fred-Harald Bratli to NRK.

It turned out that it was a rare Bluntnose sixgill shark, a shark species that can grow up to 5.5 meters long, but is harmless to humans. A Bluntnose sixgill shark has probably never been observed earlier in the Inner parts of the Oslofjord, says marine biologist Fredrik Myhre, who works as a senior adviser for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and heads the organization Hjelp Havets Haier (Help the Sharks of the Ocean).

– The Bluntnose sixgill shark is a mysterious fish that we know little about because it lives most of its life in deep waters, usually between 180 and 1,100 metres below the water surface, says Myhre.

– It was alive and kicking, so it was about to freeing it from the mesh in the net and let it back into the sea. But it’s fun to have seen one, says Bratli who makes a living from fishing in the Oslofjord.

 

© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today