Overview
- UniSC marine biologist Hugo Lassauce filmed the sequence during weekly monitoring about 15 kilometers off the New Caledonian coast.
- Two males held a female for more than an hour before mating sequentially, with copulations lasting about 63 seconds and 47 seconds.
- After the encounters the males lay immobile on the seafloor while the female swam away, and all three sharks were roughly 2.3 meters long.
- The team reported the observation in the Journal of Ethology and identified the location as a probable critical mating habitat.
- Next steps include genetic paternity testing and continued field monitoring to inform habitat protection and possible artificial insemination for the IUCN-listed species.