{"id":422888,"date":"2026-02-13T03:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/422888\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T03:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:12:13","slug":"rarely-seen-deepwater-shark-encountered-during-night-dive-off-san-diego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/422888\/","title":{"rendered":"Rarely seen deepwater shark encountered during night dive off San Diego"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A San Diego marine biologist enjoyed a rare encounter recently with a bizarre-looking shark that typically inhabits extremely deep Pacific waters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Cali Lingle, a Scripps Oceanography graduate student, was night diving with Liam Dougherty at La Jolla Cove when they spotted what Lingle initially thought was a sevengill shark.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Prickly shark passes through dive lights.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"576\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/e0700b9774b660038b4d837cc33d65a0.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Prickly shark passes through dive lights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cI thought the shark was a sevengill at first, but I saw two dorsal fins and the shark looked at least 7 feet long,\u201d she stated via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DUlhwUnAQO-\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Instagram<\/a>. \u201cTurns out this shark is extremely rare to see by divers because they commonly swim in deeper waters, closer to 300 to 2,000 feet down!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It was a prickly shark, named because of thorn-like denticles on their bodies and identifiable by two dorsal fins positioned at their rear.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/articles\/dolphins-pro-surfer-exhibit-style-160245485.html\" data-ylk=\"slk:ALSO: Dolphins, pro surfer exhibit style, grace at Santa Barabara surf spot;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ALSO: Dolphins, pro surfer exhibit style, grace at Santa Barabara surf spot<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Lingle described the encounter as amazing, adding: \u201cIt felt like discovering a new species at first because none of us knew of the shark beforehand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The footage, captured by Dougherty, is posted below.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">This article originally appeared on For The Win: <a href=\"https:\/\/ftw.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/outdoors\/2026\/02\/11\/rarely-seen-prickly-shark-encountered-night-dive-san-diego-la-jolla-cove\/88631032007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Rarely seen prickly shark encountered during night dive off San Diego;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Rarely seen prickly shark encountered during night dive off San Diego<\/a><\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A San Diego marine biologist enjoyed a rare encounter recently with a bizarre-looking shark that typically inhabits extremely&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[155609,155610,42315,155607,155611,155608,97399,90,38388,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-422888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-cali-lingle","tag-dorsal-fins","tag-la-jolla-cove","tag-liam-dougherty","tag-night-diving","tag-prickly-shark","tag-rare-encounter","tag-science","tag-sevengill-shark","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}