A shark born in the 1600s is still alive today
In the lightless depths of the Arctic Ocean, a creature moves that has outlasted empires, religions, and the entire recorded history of nations — the Greenland shark, Earth's longest-living vertebrate, with some individuals approaching 400 years of age. Science has only recently begun to reckon with what this means: that life, aging, and time itself operate on scales far beyond the human frame of reference. These apex predators, massive and largely invisible to us, ask a quiet but profound question about what it means to exist slowly, patiently, and almost entirely beyond our gaze.
- Some Greenland sharks alive today were born before the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic — a biological fact that strains the limits of human imagination.
- At nearly 24 feet long and weighing over a ton, these are formidable apex predators, yet they remain among the least understood animals on Earth due to their extreme deep-sea habitat.
- Their pace of life is almost alien: growing less than half an inch per year and waiting 134 years just to reproduce, they operate on a timeline no human institution has ever matched.
- Scientists are slowly closing the gap — using radiocarbon dating of eye tissue and GPS tags on accidentally caught sharks to map two genetically distinct populations across the Arctic and North Atlantic.
- Even the cultural relationship with these sharks carries danger: their flesh is chemically toxic to humans unless subjected to months of careful preparation, and even then, it is described as deeply unpleasant.
Somewhere in the Arctic's cold darkness, a creature has been swimming since before the United States existed. The Greenland shark is the longest-living vertebrate known to science, with the oldest studied specimen estimated at 392 years old — though radiocarbon dating uncertainty places the range anywhere from 272 to 512 years. Even conservatively, these animals were alive when the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic, enduring through centuries of human upheaval without surfacing into our awareness.
These are not small, hidden things. Greenland sharks can reach 24 feet and weigh over 2,600 pounds, making them apex predators threatened only by sperm whales. Yet they inhabit depths nearly two miles below the surface, in near-freezing water, making them extraordinarily rare to encounter. They are caught almost exclusively by accident, and photographs in their natural habitat remain genuinely remarkable events.
What deepens the strangeness is their pace. Growing only 0.4 inches per year, they do not reach sexual maturity until at least age 134 — a biological timeline so removed from human experience it borders on the philosophical. A 2016 study using radiocarbon dating of eye tissue from 28 female sharks confirmed these extraordinary ages. More recently, genetic analysis has identified two geographically distinct populations: one near Canada's Baffin Basin, another stretching between Nova Scotia and Svalbard. Researchers are slowly tagging bycatch sharks with GPS trackers, piecing together how these giants navigate their world.
There is also a human dimension, strange in its own right. In Greenland and Iceland, people have long hunted these sharks, though their flesh contains a compound that causes severe intoxication if improperly prepared — historically described as resembling extreme drunkenness requiring days of recovery. Proper preparation involves months of compression and drying. Even then, those who have eaten it rarely describe the experience as pleasurable.
What the Greenland shark ultimately offers is a reorientation of scale. A shark born in the 1600s is still alive, still moving through the dark, still growing imperceptibly. In an age that measures change in news cycles, these creatures remind us that life can unfold across centuries — and that the ocean still holds mysteries we are only beginning to name.
Somewhere in the cold depths of the Arctic Ocean, moving through waters so dark and distant that human eyes almost never find them, lives a creature that has been swimming since before the United States existed. The Greenland shark is the longest-living vertebrate known to science—a fact that reshapes how we think about time, aging, and what a life can be.
Scientists have determined that some of these sharks are nearly 400 years old. The oldest specimen researchers have studied was likely 392 years old, though the margin of error in radiocarbon dating means it could have been anywhere from 272 to 512 years. Even at the conservative end of that range, these animals were alive when the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic. They have been swimming through the same frigid waters for centuries while empires rose and fell on land.
These are not small creatures hiding in crevices. Greenland sharks can reach 24 feet in length and weigh as much as 2,645 pounds. They are apex predators, animals so large and formidable that only sperm whales pose a genuine threat to them. Yet despite their size and power, they remain among the most mysterious animals on Earth. They live in the deepest parts of the ocean—nearly two miles below the surface—in waters that range from just below freezing to around 61 degrees Fahrenheit. This extreme habitat makes them extraordinarily difficult to study. They are caught only rarely, usually by accident in fishing nets, and photographs of them in their natural environment are uncommon enough to be remarkable.
What makes their longevity even more striking is the pace at which they live. A Greenland shark grows only about 0.4 inches per year. More remarkably, they do not reach sexual maturity until they are at least 134 years old. As one researcher dryly noted, they have to wait more than a century just to reproduce—a biological timeline so alien to human experience that it almost defies comprehension. A 2016 study used radiocarbon dating of eye tissue from 28 female sharks to establish these ages, a technique that allowed scientists to peer back through centuries of the animals' lives.
Recent genetic analysis has revealed that Greenland sharks exist in two geographically distinct populations. One group inhabits the waters around Canada's Baffin Basin, above the Arctic Circle. The other occupies the north Atlantic between Nova Scotia and Svalbard, near Norway. Researchers have begun tagging sharks caught as bycatch with GPS trackers, slowly building a picture of how these giants move through their world. The work is painstaking and rare—each tagged shark is a small victory in understanding creatures that seem designed by nature to remain hidden.
In Greenland and Iceland, some people have long hunted these sharks for their oil and meat, despite a peculiar danger. The shark's tissue contains trimethylamine oxide, a compound that protects the animal in extreme cold and pressure but causes severe intoxication in humans who consume it improperly. Historically, people who ate untreated Greenland shark meat experienced symptoms resembling extreme drunkenness, requiring days of sleep to recover. Modern preparation involves compressing the carcass to leach out the toxin, then hanging the meat to dry for up to four months before serving it in small cubes. Even when prepared correctly, those who have tasted it describe the experience as deeply unpleasant—a delicacy only in the sense that it represents survival and tradition, not pleasure.
As scientists continue to study these animals, they are learning that the Greenland shark operates on a timescale almost incomprehensible to human minds. A shark born in the 1600s is still alive today, still moving through the darkness, still growing at a pace so slow it is almost imperceptible. In an era when we measure change in months and years, these creatures remind us that life can unfold across centuries, that aging itself can be radically different from what we know, and that the ocean still holds mysteries we are only beginning to understand.
Citas Notables
These quiet giants spend hundreds of years below the ocean, slowly roaming the depths in near- to below-freezing waters, rarely seen by the human eye.— Meaghan Swintek, biologist at California State University, Fullerton
Even the lowest part of the age range—at least 272 years—still makes Greenland sharks the longest-living vertebrate known to science.— Julius Nielsen, researcher
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does it matter that we know how old these sharks are? They're not endangered, they're not affecting human life directly.
It matters because longevity is a window into how life works. If we understand why a Greenland shark can live 400 years while a human lives 80, we might learn something about aging itself—about what makes cells wear out, or what prevents them from wearing out.
So this is really about human medicine, not about the sharks.
It's about both. But yes, there's a practical angle. We're aging. We want to know if there's something in the biology of extreme longevity that could apply to us. The shark is a living experiment in how to survive in one of Earth's harshest environments for centuries.
The fact that they don't reproduce until 134—that seems like a design flaw.
It's not a flaw. It's an adaptation. In the deep Arctic, food is scarce and unpredictable. Growing slowly, living slowly, waiting a century to breed—that's a strategy for survival in scarcity. It's the opposite of how most animals live, but it works perfectly for where they are.
And we barely know anything about them because they're so hard to find.
Exactly. They live two miles down in near-freezing water. We catch them by accident. We tag them when we can. We're essentially trying to study an animal that has evolved to be invisible to us. Every piece of data is hard-won.