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If you’re thinking of embarking on an epic adventure to Antarctica, you’re probably counting on seeing seals, penguins, and maybe the odd giant like a humpback, minke, and even orca. But nobody expects to see a shark—they’re generally considered absent from these near-freezing waters. Now, for the first time, researchers have released footage of a sleeper shark caught on camera at a depth of 490 meters (more than 1,600 feet) in Antarctic waters at 1.27°C, or 34.29°F.

The slow-moving shark, which was filmed back in January 2025, had an estimated length of between 10 and 13 feet (3 and 4 meters). The camera that captured the footage, operated by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre (a joint project of the Minderoo Foundation and the University of Western Australia), was positioned off the South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula.

“We went down there not expecting to see sharks because there’s a general rule of thumb that you don’t get sharks in Antarctica,” the center’s founding director, Alan Jamieson, told the Associated Press. “And it’s not even a little one either. It’s a hunk of a shark. These things are tanks.” Professor Jamieson said that he could find no record of another shark found in the Antarctic Ocean.

Peter Kyne, a Charles Darwin University conservation biologist who was not involved in the research, agreed that sharks had never before been recorded so far south, despite the assumption that climate change and warming oceans could potentially be driving sharks to the Southern Hemisphere’s colder waters. “This is great,” enthused Kyne. “The shark was in the right place, the camera was in the right place and they got this great footage. It’s quite significant.”

It is thought the deepwater shark could be a southern sleeper shark (Somniosus antarcticus), the most southerly occurring shark species, which is well known from sub-Antarctic area such as Macquarie Island, Heard Island, and McDonald Islands. The southern sleeper shark was first identified from a sketch of a washed-up specimen on Macquarie Island in 1913, as part of a scientific mission to sub-Antarctic islands and the Antarctic led by Sir Douglas Mawson. Other sleeper sharks include the Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus), which is found in the northern hemisphere and is believed to live to about 400 years.

The Antarctic Ocean is heavily stratified and Professor Jamieson suggested that the sleeper shark was found at that depth because that was the warmest layer. He suspects other Antarctic sharks live at similar depths, feeding on the carcasses of whales, giant squids and other marine creatures. Whether we will bump into one anytime soon is another matter: There are few research cameras positioned at that specific depth in Antarctic waters, and they only operate during the Southern Hemisphere summer months (December through February). “The other 75% of the year, no one’s looking at all,” Jamieson said. “And so this is why, I think, we occasionally come across these surprises.”

Check out the footage below and read more about the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre’s work here.