• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Ghostly White Deep-Sea Shark With Leucism Caught Off Albanian Coast In World First

November 15, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

A rare deep-sea shark has been caught off the coast of Albania exhibiting an unusual skin pigment disorder that has turned it ghostly white. It is the first known case of this species of piggy-faced shark having leucism.

The angular roughshark (Oxynotus centrina) is an odd sea beastie. They look like someone smashed the idea of a shark with a kid’s drawing of a pig – they have a small, squat body, wide-set eyes, a pinkish snout, large nostrils, and distinct dermal denticles (tooth-like scales that cover shark bodies) which gives them an almost fuzzy look.

Advertisement

These sharks are found across the eastern Atlantic, from Norway to South Africa, and are known to inhabit the Mediterranean too. They are typically found between 60 and 600 meters (197 to 1,968 feet) below the surface. They are also critically endangered, which has meant they are increasingly hard to find, despite their relatively wide distribution. 

A recent specimen caught by commercial trawlers off Sazan Island – an uninhabited military zone off the coast of Albania – was rarer still. It has leucism, a rare pigment condition that causes an animal’s skin, feathers, scales or cuticles to appear pale or whiter.

The photo shows two examples of angular roughsharks, one above the other. The top example is a normal specimen with dark, brownish skin while the specimen below it is significantly paler with several white patches, especially towards its tail.

Angular roughsharks are usually a dark, brownish color, which is ideal for lurking in the ocean’s depths, but the recently caught specimen is pale and almost white in comparison.

Image courtesy of Andrej Gajić, Sharklab ADRIA

The condition is similar to but still distinct from albinism. In the latter case, the animal experiences the complete loss of melanin pigment in all its cells, which makes it appear white or yellowish, and gives it red or pink eyes. Leucism, in contrast, is a partial loss of pigment, so the white coloration is less pronounced or less uniform and it also doesn’t affect the animal’s eyes.

Angular roughsharks are typically dark gray-brown or even black, which helps them blend into the dark environments they inhabit – but this specimen, described in a new study, was ghostly pale with white-gray patches. Despite its unusual color, the shark was otherwise healthy and seemed unaffected by its condition.

Advertisement

“Some research [suggests] that a lack of pigmentation may make individuals more visible to both predators and prey, potentially reducing their chances of survival,” lead author Andrej Gajić, the director of the Sharklab ADRIA in Albania and National Geographic Explorer, told IFLScience.

“However, our discovery, along with several other recent observations of healthy adult sharks with pigment disorders, preliminary implies that these anomalies do not significantly affect their feeding abilities or ability to evade predators, nor do they impede sexual maturity and reproduction.”

The photo shows Andrej Gajic holding the pale angular roughshark underwater. The photo was taken at night but was illuminated from below. Gajic's head and shoulders are framed above the water, which takes up the top half of the image, while the lower part shows his hands holding the shark which is clearly pale.

Andrej Gajić examining the pale angular roughshark.

Image courtesy of Andrej Gajić, Sharklab ADRIA

Although both pigment disorders are rare, leucism is slightly more common than albinism more generally. However, few cases have ever been recorded in sharks.

“Pigment disorders such as albinism and leucism are exceptionally rare among sharks and their relatives, with only 15 documented cases among deep-sea species”, Gajić added.

Advertisement

The conditions are mostly caused by genetic disorders that may disrupt the production or distribution of melanin. This can occur at the embryonic stage, and lead to abnormal pigmentation patterns.

Gajić and colleagues conducted this research as part of the Explorers Club Expedition Grant. They are currently conducting a systematic study into deep-sea elasmobranchs – cartilaginous fish – within the northern Mediterranean, with a specific focus on sharks. Their work is primarily aimed at examining post-capture survival rates, disease, and wider traits to generate new critical insights to help support conservation efforts.

The paper is published in the Journal of Fish Biology.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-Manchester test likely to be postponed after India COVID-19 case
  2. EU to attend U.S. trade meeting put in doubt by French anger
  3. Soccer-West Ham win again, Leicester and Napoli falter
  4. Was Jesus A Hallucinogenic Mushroom? One Scholar Certainly Thought So

Source Link: Ghostly White Deep-Sea Shark With Leucism Caught Off Albanian Coast In World First

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version