Researchers Capture First-Ever Live Footage of a Painted Swellshark
Scientists used baited cameras to record the first-ever live footage of a painted swellshark, one of the rarest deep-sea animals in the world.
A team of researchers sunk baited cameras into the deep sea off Dili, Timor-Leste, a country in Southeast Asia, for the first time in November 2024 and filmed a live painted swellshark in a scientific first.
The researchers captured the footage using special deep-sea cameras that were lowered into the water. On 17 November 2024, they were stunned to film one painted swellshark — an animal that had never been seen alive before. The following day, the scientists recorded another swellshark.
In a study published in the journal Oryx last month, scientists say the shark returned to the camera several times at both the sites. In one instance a female shark even interacted with the bait and made several passes in front of the camera.
Lost Shark Guy Dave Ebert along with Dr William White, a senior curator of the Australian National Fish Collection at CSIRO, confirmed that the animal the team recorded is a painted swellshark and the researchers had recorded the first live video footage of the species.
“Essentially, we just wanted to see what is down there — the painted swellshark was a bonus! But also a nice indication that there is loads to still explore and discover in Timor-Leste,” Louw Claassens, lead author of the study and a zoologist at Rhodes University, tells IFLScience.
This painted swellshark was first identified in fish markets in 2008 but the species has never been observed in the wild until now.
Very little information is currently known about the species’ ecology, habitat, or behavior. However, the new footage suggests the species’ natural habitat consists of steep rocky underwater slopes near eastern Indonesia — information that could be key to informing conservation.
‘Low-Cost Deep Sea Cameras’
Mongabay reports that the team used low-cost deep-sea cameras developed by the National Geographic Society Exploration Technology Lab (NGETL), which provided a new way to study deep-sea environments more easily.
Previously, scientists have had to embark on expensive and difficult deep-sea research which “entails big boats, large research funds, and big exploration surveys” to survey the deep sea, according to Claassens.
The new deep-sea camera system was reportedly made using a low-cost, lightweight remote lander platform. This system is designed to collect environmental data and capture 4K high-resolution video to depths of 6,000 m (19,685 ft).
“Having access to these low-cost camera systems is really a game changer,” Claassens tells Mongabay.
