Sharks Have Officially Reached Antarctica, and Scientists Are Shook

Sharks prowl nearly every marine ecosystem on Earth—except one. For decades, scientists assumed the waters around Antarctica were simply too cold to sustain these predators, but a surprise sighting is challenging that belief.

Scientists with the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, based in Western Australia, were operating an undersea camera off the South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula when a southern sleeper shark glided into view. The specimen, filmed in January 2025, was spotted more than 1,600 feet (490 meters) beneath the sea surface. At that depth, the water temperature was just 35.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), according to the Research Centre.

“That was certainly very unexpected,” Heather Stewart, a senior researcher and associate professor at the Deep-Sea Research Centre, said in a March 2025 video about the sighting. “In terms of geographic distribution, [this species has] not actually been seen within Antarctic waters. This is the most southerly that this seems to have been found,” she added.

Venturing into uncharted waters

The southern sleeper shark is a large, slow-moving species of deepwater shark typically found across the Southern Ocean from central Chile to the sub-Antarctic Islands. While it is well adapted to cold temperatures, it’s still rare to see this species venture into the frigid waters immediately surrounding Antarctica.

The Southern Ocean is heavily stratified, with vertical water layers that change in temperature and salinity according to their depth. The sleeper shark caught on camera maintained a depth of roughly 1,600 feet along a seabed that sloped into deeper water. This is a relatively warmer layer, providing a hospitable “corridor” that allowed this specimen to venture south of its geographic range, according to the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre.

While this is the first photographic evidence of a shark in this region, this specimen likely isn’t alone. Alan Lamieson, founding director of the Research Centre, told the Associated Press that other Antarctic sharks probably live at the same depth, taking advantage of the warm layer to feed on whales, giant squid, and other animals that die and sink to the seafloor.

The potential role of climate change

Peter Kyne, a Charles Darwin University conservation biologist who was not part of the team that captured video of this shark, told the AP that warming oceans due to climate change may be driving sharks toward Antarctica. Studies have shown that the distributions of numerous marine species—including sharks—have shifted as a result of rising ocean temperatures, with some research suggesting climate change could make Antarctica hospitable to sharks.

But impacts vary widely by species, and Kyne noted that there is limited data on range changes near Antarctica because the region is so remote. As such, the role climate change plays in pushing sharks farther south remains unclear.

The historic documentation of a shark in Antarctic waters begs for more research to investigate their prevalence in this region. Future findings could offer valuable insight into how climate change—or other environmental pressures—is reshaping the Antarctic Ocean’s ecology.