Overview
- The carcass, reported near Sligo Harbour on Saturday, was confirmed as Ireland’s first recorded Greenland shark stranding.
- A multi-agency team recovered the nearly three-metre male from difficult rocks using a crane and moved it to the National Museum.
- Museum staff have begun a full postmortem and are preserving tissue and organs for the scientific collection.
- Specialists estimate the shark was about 150 years old, with developed claspers indicating it was close to sexual maturity.
- Greenland sharks dwell in deep Arctic and North Atlantic waters and can live for centuries, so this rare Irish find offers new clues about their aging and ecology.