Andy Murch

Having photographed most of the sharks and rays that can be seen on scuba around the world, Andy Murch is doggedly pursuing the remaining few. Recently, his elasmobranch obsession took him to Papua New Guinea, where he hoped to find three endemic species of epaulette sharks.

It certainly looks “prehistoric”—whatever that means. Cigar-shaped, blunt-snouted, with that slightly “sock-puppet-looking” smirk, the overall look of this big beastie is very much that of an ancestral shark, like some of the deep-water dogfishes, the sleeper sharks and others. Indeed, fossil remains similar to modern sevengills and sixgills are known from the Jurassic and perhaps much earlier.

Shark aficionado, photojournalist and conservationist Andy Murch, a self-confessed “elasmo-holic,” braves the chaos of Christmas holiday travel during a pandemic to get to Costa Rica, in his quest to capture images of elusive sharks and rays in areas less travelled.