A Great White Shark swims past a diving cage off Gansbaai about 200 kilometres east of Cape Town
A Great White Shark swims past a diving cage off Gansbaai about 200 kilometres east of Cape Town. Hunted to the brink of extinction in the 1970's and 1980's, the Great White is now a protected specis in many parts of the world. In South Africa shark cage diving forms a growing business in the eco- and adventure tourism industries. Reuters/Ho New

On Jan 29, Mitsukurina owstoni, also known as a goblin shark or "living fossil," was found by local fishermen off Green Cape on the south coast of New South Wales. The fishermen caught the goblin shark, which was usually found at a depth of around 1,200 metres close to the sea floor, in a net along with dozens of crayfish. They knew they had found an unusual organism.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a 22-year-old fisherman named Lochlainn Kelly, who started fishing when he was 15 years with Mike, his father, caught the rare shark amongst the other fish. He said that he was more excited than scared.

Kelly said that they winched the wire up and brought the net on top when they noticed the goblin shark in the net. He had lived in Eden for a long time but had not seen anything like the shark before. He said that he was excited but not freaked out. He added that he had looked at photos of the sharks before but had never seen one live.

Another man nicknamed "old Errol" said that he had not come across a goblin shark before, though he had been fishing for decades. The fishermen took the fish to Wharf Aquarium curator Michael McMaster and a scientist from the Sapphire Coast Marine Discovery Centre, Alan Scrymgeour.

The curator, McMaster, said that little is known about goblin sharks, which were usually found in deep waters. He said that the sharks found their prey like crustaceans and cephalopods with the help of sensors in their "nasal paddle." The sensors helped in the detection of electrical fields that was produced by their prey.

According to the description of Scrymgeour, the goblin shark belongs to an "evolutionary dead end." He said that this was the only species of this genus that had stopped evolving during the dinosaur era, about millions of years ago. He went on to say that the shark measured about 1.2 metres in length and in age, would have been about 2 to 3 years old.

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