Bluntnose Sixgill Shark
A bluntnose sixgill shark caught off the waters of Cape Eleuthera on a deepwater longline for research. The shark was tagged and released unharmed.
The research was being done by the Cape Eleuthera Institute in the Bahamas. It's a research institution next to a semester school for high schoolers called The Island School, so the kids can participate in a lot of the research with the scientists. Those were the kids you saw snorkeling in the video. I went to The Island School when I was in high school, and I went back last spring to intern with the shark research team at CEI. The island of Eleuthera is unique in that one side is a very shallow sound, which allows scientists to research shallow water sharks like tiger and bull sharks. The other side of the island drops of to 3000 feet deep which gives a unique opportunity to research deepwater species without having to go hundreds of miles off shore. In this video we set a deepwater longline off the drop off. It took hours to pull up by hand and we got extremely lucky. We tied it up to the side of the boat while the other researchers collected blood and tissue samples and tagged it. The whole process took about 15 minutes. I was trying to video/photograph the whole thing. Luckily, some of the Island School students had GoPros in the water so I was able to get footage from them. It was a bit disoriented when we released it, so the other intern had to guide it back down. That's when I jumped in the water with my GoPro and tried to swim after it.
