Not the Onion: Sharkcano

[Recusant]

This is a splendid silly season story. The silly season may not be happening this year, but this story is welcome nonetheless. 

"Sharkcano?! There Are Sharks Living in a Volcano, for the Love of God" | The Daily Beast

Hear the phrase "Sharkcano" and you understandably envision one of those trashy and outrageous movies in which washed-up stars face off against massive man-eating sharks, deadly tornadoes, and awful CGI.

[snipped entertaining riffing]

In 2015, National Geographic scientists including explorer Brennan Phillips discovered a phenomenon that they never predicted: two species of sharks living inside the crater of an underwater active volcano.

That volcano, Kavachi, is located 60 feet below the ocean's surface near the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean. On a trip to study the caldera, Phillips and his crew dropped a robotic camera into the crater. (Humans, you see, cannot physically survive traveling inside an active volcano themselves.)

When the footage revealed hammerheads and silky sharks swimming in the scalding, highly acidic waters, you could have bowled them over with a feather.

Nothing about the environment should seem habitable, let alone inviting to the creatures based on everything researchers knew. Thus the obvious question was raised: Except for haunting the nightmares of galeophobic drylanders, what the hell were the sharks doing there?

[Continues . . .]

if you don't want to bother with the link

No real explanation of why they'd be swimming inside the mouth of an active volcano--vague hand-waving about "adapting to climate change".   

[Randy]

Interesting. I wonder if they'll come out with a movie.

Seriously though, I wonder how they can survive such temperatures and the acidic water? I'll read the rest of the story but I'm pretty sure they don't know yet but will find out.

Life is amazing to watch.