Baited camera films one of 'the world's rarest shark species' off Wales

Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald on Jul 29, 2025

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Off the western coast of the United Kingdom, conservationists attached some bait to an underwater camera, dropped the contraption to the seabed and waited. When they eventually watched the footage, it left them stunned.

They’d filmed one of “the world’s rarest shark species.”

A team of researchers set out to investigate “dolphin diets and marine diversity” in Cardigan Bay, Wales, as part of an ongoing, yearslong effort known as the Dolphin Diet Detectives Project, the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales said in a July 26 news release.

To do this, researchers dropped baited underwater remote video systems into “a range of habitats” at Cardigan Bay, left the cameras “to record for just one hour at each location” and then reviewed the footage, the organization said.

The process was tedious but worthwhile. One clip stood out from the rest of the footage.

The 5-second video showed an angelshark, “one of the rarest and most threatened species of sharks found in Welsh waters,” the organization wrote in a YouTube caption. The video shows a flat, gray-brown shark appear in front of the camera and swim past it.

Angelsharks are a critically endangered species that “live on the seabed where they are well camouflaged to ambush” prey, the trust said. Their populations have suffered “significant declines as a result of fishing and habitat degradation.”

“We were thrilled to record an angelshark in Cardigan Bay, a rare and exciting encounter,” Sarah Perry, a conservationist with the organization, said in the release. “Before this project started, angelsharks hadn’t been captured on film in Cardigan Bay since 2021.”

“It was one of those amazing moments, we knew right away what we had recorded,” Perry told McClatchy News via email. “We knew we had seen something special. Angelsharks are so distinctive even though they’re rare, they’re unmistakable.”

“To capture (an angelshark) on film in Welsh waters is not only rare, it highlights just how important Welsh seas are for marine life, and how vital it is that we continue to protect these incredible species and their habitats,” Perry said on July 28.

The team did not specify the date or location of the angelshark sighting “for research and conservation reasons,” Perry said, but confirmed it was “very recent.”

Cardigan Bay is a large inlet off the western coast of Wales and across the channel from Ireland.

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