Is This Photo of the Ultra-Rare Goblin Shark Actually a Toy?

A controversy is raging within the small but fiercely passionate world of ichthyology (the study of fishes). Depending on who you talk to, either a rare deep-sea shark washed up on the shores of Greece’s Anafi Island in 2020, and marked the first-ever recording of a goblin shark sighting in the Mediterranean Sea; or, some scientists faked the whole discovery using a plastic toy and duped the whole world with some trickery that’s not much more advanced than a simple social media prank.

The fight stems from a paper published in the journal Mediterranean Marine Science last May, which detailed a goblin shark specimen that a citizen scientist stumbled upon while walking along the Greek beach. The paper, authored by three marine biologists from three different universities (two in Greece and one in Scotland), included a photo taken by a citizen scientist depicting an unusually small, gray-blue and remarkably well-preserved goblin shark. It was an incredible finding—the kind scientists pray might fall into their lap during the course of their careers.

And for some, it was too good to be true. The photo rang alarm bells for some marine scientists almost immediately after it was published.

Read more at The Daily Beast.