Scientists still have no explanation for this mysterious accumulation.

Second sighting

A huge school of bizarre-looking sharks in Australia have been filmed sleeping in a “carpet” formation on the seafloor – and it’s not the first time researchers have encountered them there.

The animals, named Port Jackson sharks after the region of Australia where they were first discovered, were found in their thousands lying asleep on the floor of a marine park, according to a press release from the University of Tasmania.

“There were thousands of sharks,” explained UTAS researcher Jacquomo Monk, “packed together like a carpet stretching across the sea floor.”

According to the statement, these incredible images were captured by an autonomous aquatic robot equipped with a camera, which was remotely controlled from a government research vessel floating above.

It’s hard to believe, but scientists from the University of Tasmania’s Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies said they had seen the sharks swimming in schools in this strange manner, in almost exactly the same area where they had observed them six years earlier.

While it’s obviously an amazing sight, as Monk noted, marine scientists don’t really know why sharks tend to “congregate” in this way – and that’s not the only unknown in this situation.

In total

These gathering places of shark schools, known as “aggregation sites,” are observed relatively frequently in marine research, although no one knows exactly why marine life tends to do so.

While the Port Jackson sharks had been spotted in the same location before, this time the team found that “the beagle aggregation appears to be female-only,” Monk said. That makes some sense, as this species tends to segregate by sex except for mating, but there are still more questions than answers.

“We don’t know exactly why the females are here,” Monk said in the press release. “Perhaps they are feasting on the local delicacy – doughboy scallops – before making the long journey north to lay their eggs.”

Although scientists still need to do a lot more research to get to the bottom of this phenomenon, one thing seems pretty certain: “The fact that we see them again tells us that this area is important to them,” Monk concluded.

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