Remarkable species! However, I'll admit that I do have my doubts about it. Although now known to be much more frequent in the northwest Pacific than believed in the past (it's not rare), it really doesn't seem to do well in captivity. It shows up more-or-less annually in Japanese aquariums, but rarely survives more than a week. Though the ones handed over by fishermen probably would end up on a dinner plate otherwise, this might be a species aquariums should forget about until a capture method that suits this deep-water shark is developed (they're usually quite damaged even before they're placed in the tank).
In fact, it appears to have a cosmopolitan distribution throughout the temperate and tropical oceans of the world, with specimens now known from locations such as New Zealand, northern California, the Caribbean, South Africa and the Bay of Biscay. So the taxon is quite possibly a *lot* more common than is realised.
It has been known for a long time that it essentially is cosmopolitan. However, it was consistently reported as occurring in extremely low densities everywhere. It is only in the last decade or so that it has been realized that it can be quite regular locally (so far restricted to the NW Pacific). Everywhere else it remains a rarity based on current records, though I strongly suspect this is a matter of incomplete sampling rather than actual rarity. There are places where the rarity appears to be real; the deeper oceans off California and the Gulf of Mexico are among the best sampled in the entire world and the goblin is exceptional in both places. Interestingly, the megamouth shark has followed a rather similar pattern: Cosmopolitan but first believed to be exceptionally rare everywhere. Although still rarer than the goblin, it now appears to be more regular locally (NW Pacific).
Oh wow; didn't even see that at first. Course the fact that one has already died doesn't suprise me at all.
One wonders whether there is something about the NW Pacific which makes it more amenable to unusual, specialised sharks.......
Did you see a Frilled shark in there too? Supposedly there was one in there with the Goblin, but it may have died by then - perhaps the Frilled shark is the one in the bottom right, since according to several sources only one Goblin shark was caught and the dead specimen looks a but like a Frilled shark.