Daily Shark Fact - 5/23/2025
Today's shark is the velvet belly lanternshark!
The basics: one of the most abundant deep-sea sharks, the velvet belly lanternshark (Etmopterus spinax) is a small species of dogfish shark (no more than 18 inches long) named for their black, velvety-looking bellies. Like other lanternsharks, they have bioluminescent photophores along their bellies, which provide counter-shading that helps camouflage the shark from predators. It can be identified by its very small gill slits. Velvet belly lanternsharks have very large livers, over 15% of their body mass on average, with a high quantity of liver oil that makes them neutrally buoyant in the water - unlike most sharks, which are negatively buoyant and will sink, velvet belly lanternsharks will not.
Conservation status: vulnerable. This shark has virtually no commercial value, but is a very frequent bycatch in deep-sea trawl lines. They reproduce slowly, and populations are very vulnerable to decline from over-fishing.
Today's fun fact: the deep sea has a higher concentration of heavy metals than higher up in the water column. To combat this, velvet belly lanternsharks' t-cells, a type of white blood cell, are able to identify and mark heavy metals in their blood stream so they can be passed out of their bodies.
