The term is called counter elimination, the way you can picture it is if you were on a boat and you looked down and you saw a silhouette of something. You didn’t know what it was but you saw a shadow in the water. The idea here is that these sharks are trying to glow just enough to eliminate that shadow.

Victoria Elena Vasquez

Categorized in : Science

It is probably living in an environment where it might, even though it is really small compared to other sharks, be one of the larger things there, we’re not totally sure what this one is eating but other lantersharks are eating smaller fish, crustaceans.

Victoria Elena Vasquez

We’re not totally sure what this one is eating but other lantersharks are eating smaller fish, crustaceans, it’s likely that it’s eating the same things or something similar.

Victoria Elena Vasquez

I've seen a few reports alluding to how dangerous and scary this shark might be, which is pretty funny to me since the largest one we found (a full grown adult) was 515 mm long (20 inches) from head to tail, since we don't have a lot of specimens we can't confirm if they grow larger, but since it lives in the deep sea, it would be too challenging for people to have a chance encounter in the water without a submersible.

Victoria Elena Vasquez

In a lot of the other lantersharks, these photophores are clustered in these really obvious black markings, so, you can imagine how difficult it is to look for black markings on an already very black shark. But under a microscope, you can actually see the dots themselves. They were there. We just didn’t see any of these really obvious clusters that you see in other sharks.

Victoria Elena Vasquez

The idea is that they would be stealthier than other lanternshark... by Victoria Elena Vasquez

The idea is that they would be stealthier than other lanternsharks.

Victoria Elena Vasquez