iStockphoto / Andres Fletes/jroballo
Spend enough time on/in the water and you are bound to see some awe-inspiring things. One huge reason I have always been passionate about fishing is the thrill of the unknown… I never know what species I’m going to catch, if any, or how big they’ll be, and what other creatures we might encounter.
Having fished in Costa Rica a handful of times, both near shore and offshore, the abundance of species is almost overwhelming with a new fish species coming up every time the line goes down. But all of that is to say that nobody could have ever expected what was reeled in a few weeks ago by angler Juan Pablo of Parismina Domus Dei fishing the Caribbean waters of Costa Rica: the first-ever bright orange nurse shark.
First Ever Bright Orange Shark Caught In Costa Rica
I first came across this bright orange shark last week when an article on AllThatIsInteresting.com went live describing the nurse shark has having both xanthism and albinism.
Xanthochromism, or Xanthism, is rare in animals and is characterized by low levels of yellow pigmentation or a lack of red pigmentation that is replaced with yellow pigmentation. It has been observed in many bird species (northern cardinal, great spotted woodpecker, etc) but this is the first time it has been observed in a shark.
Taking it further, the bright orange nurse shark also had albinism causing its eyes to look ghostly.
This orange nurse shark was caught by angler Juan Pablo of Parismina Domus Dei while fishing in the Parque Nacional Tortuguero on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast north of Limon on a pristine stretch of rain forest jungle. They were fishing in about 120 feet of water when the alien-like orange shark was reeled up from the deep:
First of its kind!
If I were on the reel and that shark came up my mind would immediately go to diet. My assumption would be there was some sort of diet adaptation impacting the shark’s pigmentation. And I would’ve been dead wrong.
Marine biologists moved quickly with this specimen and a study titled ‘First record case of free-living xanthism in the nurse shark Ginglymostoma cirratum (Bonnaterre, 1788) from Caribbean Sea’ was already published in the Spring Marine Biodiversity scientific journal.
I’ve been thinking about this shark pretty much every day since. And how if this was 2,000 years ago and someone saw that shark in the ocean they would have thought it was a deity of some sort. Heck, if this was 1,000 years ago they might have thought the same. In fact, I’m not so sure it isn’t.
In the study, the scientists observed that this is the first-known nurse shark in Costa Rican waters that has “exhibited intense yellow-orange pigmentation and white eyes, indicating a condition known as albino-xanthochromism.”
If you caught this shark in a pre-camera era how on god’s green earth would you ever get anyone to believe you? ‘Yeah, I was fishing in 120ft of water and reeled up what looked like a shark the color of the sun. I swear.’
Nobody would ever believe you. I wouldn’t believe you. But here we are, with an electric orange shark rocking the marine biology world. You love to see it.