“The Prickly Shark Held Briefly In Captivity”

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“The Prickly Shark Held Briefly In Captivity”

Posted by Sajid on June 15, 2009 0 Comment

The rare prickly shark captured recently off the coast of California is not in my son’s “Monsters of the Deep” book, but it should be. It seems like one of the many weird creatures I’ve learned about since my seven-year-old developed an interest in deep sea creatures.

Yesterday marked only the second time a prickly shark has been kept in captivity and the first time it was exhibited. It was held at the Monteray Bay Aquarium for only a few hours before being released because it wasn’t doing well in the tank. I’m going to tell my son all about it when he gets home from school today.

The four-foot long prickly shark has thorny skin and an extra dorsal fin at the base of it’s tail. It’s found mostly in submarine canyons and it’s numbers are being depleted due to overfishing. The one in Monteray was found at a depth of 3,000 feet, where the most exotic species in the ocean can be found.

This year, my son became fascinated with the freakish creatures that live at those depths and so have I, after reading his deep sea books with him. Because of Nate, I know about such obscure species as the “hagfish,‘‘ which lives off dead animals that fall to the ocean floor and the “viperfish” which dwells 5,000 feet down and has fangs so big they can’t fit inside it’s mouth.

That far down, there are fantastic volcanoes called “hydrothermal vents” and fish that glow to provide light in the darkness, where sunlight never penetrates.

I doubt I would know any of these things unless if it weren’t for Nate. And it’s one of the things I love best about being a mom–all the strange bits of knowledge and trivia you can collect just because your children are curious about something.

Most of the deep sea creatures that Nate and I love to read about were only discovered in the 1970s, when I was a child, so I missed the opportunity to learn about them then. Scientests estimate that there are thousand more that we have yet to discover.

The prickly shark, the viper fish, and all the other weird and wonderful animals that captivate my kids, are proof that the world is still full of secrets still waiting to be revealed and that strange and exotic things can be found even in the most familiar places.

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Source: http://www.nj.com