‘My God, what is this?’ Fishermen pulled in an orange shark off Costa Rica

Fishermen in Costa Rica caught a rare orange nurse shark, believed to be the first recorded case. Photo / Garvin Watson, Juan Pablo Solano and Parismina Domus Dei, The New York Times

Whatever it was, the creature was feisty.

The fishermen had spent the last half-hour trying to pull it towards the surface.

Hooked under the water, it could be a red snapper or an amberjack, they thought – powerful, large game fish known for their strong fighting ability.

What emerged was something entirely different.

“We saw an orange glow below the water and I said, ‘My God, what is this?’” said Garvin Watson, 43, a sport fishing guide and hotel owner in Barra del Parismina, a small town located on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.

A bright, tangerine-coloured nurse shark wriggled alongside the boat.

It was unlike any other shark that Watson, the descendant of a long line of fishers, had ever encountered.

“I still get goose bumps simply remembering what happened,” he said.

Watson caught the 6ft (1.82m) nurse shark in August last year, and it garnered some attention after he posted photos of the animal on social media.

Researchers quickly noticed, too, realising this could be the first recorded case of an orange shark.

“I saw the photos and I was impressed,” said Daniel Arauz Naranjo, a marine biologist and executive director of Costa Rica’s Rescue Centre for Endangered Marine Species. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is something strange.’”

This month, Arauz Naranjo and his colleagues published a study on the shark in the peer-reviewed journal Marine Biodiversity.

They concluded that the nurse shark’s odd pigmentation – the intense yellow-orange hue on its body and ghostly white eyes with no visible iris – might be the result of two rare genetic conditions taking place at the same time: albinism and xanthism.

The first condition strips any pigment from the body, including the eyes. The second causes an excess of yellow pigments.

Seeing both conditions at once can be extremely rare, mostly because animals with them might become easy targets for predators.

Clearly, though, the shark discovered last year had no trouble surviving.

Arauz Naranjo speculated that the murky waters in the area might have helped it when it was smaller, hiding its flashy colours from hungry predators.

Before letting it go, Watson approached the creature and kissed its sandpaper-like back, he said.

“Thank you, we love you,” Watson remembers telling the animal.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Emiliano Rodríguez Mega

Photograph by: Garvin Watson, Juan Pablo Solano and Parismina Domus Dei

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