Incredible Thresher Shark Birth Caught on Camera

In an incredible turn of events, a pelagic thresher shark was accidentally caught on camera giving birth, "the first record of any oceanic species giving birth."

The amazing photograph, now published in the journal Coral Reefs, was taken during a 2013 research dive in a seamount (undersea mountain) in the Philippines. It is believed to be the first record of a birth in this species (Alopias pelagicus).

"I have never seen a comparable image for any other pelagic shark," Dr. Simon Thorrold, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), told BBC News. "It may well be, or at least the first time that the event has been photographed, but this is always difficult to say definitively."

According to the IUCN Red List, thresher sharks are a vulnerable species with populations in a downward spiral due to fisheries exploitation in the Indian and Pacific Oceans where they live. The species is used for its meat, liver oil, and hides for leather and fins for shark-fin soup.

But the place where this latest thresher birth was documented was at a shark "cleaning station" - where these predators go to have parasites nibbled away by smaller fish called cleaner wrasse.

"It looks like this area is not just a cleaning station, which is already massively essential, it's also serving as a pupping ground," lead researcher Dr. Simon Oliver, from the University of Chester, told BBC.

Taking this into consideration, researchers believe the study site is important for the conservation of this vulnerable species. Oliver and his colleagues are now working to make the seamount a designated protected area.

In other recent shark birth news, a female brownbanded bamboo shark at the California Academy of Sciences' Steinhart Aquarium demonstrated the longest case of sperm storage ever seen, delaying fertilization for an astonishing four years.

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