While driving North Beach yesterday afternoon, investigating a report of an unusually high number of dead seabirds drifting around the Pribilofs, a came upon this washed up specimen. This is a Pacific sleeper shark, a stubby-nosed deep water species found throughout the continental shelf, from Baja California Mexico to the Arctic Circle in the Chukchi Sea. Once considered to be a docile bottom feeder, passively foraging on soles, halibut, and benthic invertebrates, surprisingly recent diet studies have revealed a high percentage of larger sleeper sharks sampled in Alaskan waters contained stomachs full of fast moving marine mammals, including St. Paul's very own northern fur seal. This one was looking a little too rotund to risk puncturing the bloated abdomen to poke around the stomach, plus I didn't have a sharp knife on me, so the composition of its last meal will forever remain a mystery.
Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-500 f/4 @ 1/320 sec.
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