A pocket shark–a small rare species that until recently had only been sighted once (off the coast of Peru)–was found in a package of frozen fish. Not the kind of frozen fish at your supermarket, though. This discovery was made in a package of sea creatures picked up by a trawler in the Gulf of Mexico years ago and stored for later examination in the giant freezers at the NOAA/NMFS Southeast Fisheries Science Center.
Despite its small size, the “Pocket” shark isn’t named because you can tuck into your jeans and go. A feature of the dorsal fin gives the tiny creature its name. As biologist Mark Grace told the Associated Press: “That pocket over on the pectoral fin, I had never seen anything like that on a shark.”