Our facility has been developing an artificial uterus apparatus for the ex-situ conservation of rare sharks.
Between 2021to 2022, using the artificial uterus apparatus, we reared pups of the deap-sea Mollers lantern shark, for the second time. Although births didn’t occur in the first attempt, our second attempt succeeded in the world’s first stable rearing of the pups, and our results were published in an international scientific journal.
From two months prior to "birth", the hatchlings were slowly acclimatized to seawater, after birth there were given a special easily digestible diet. These factors helped the project succeed.

Mollers lantern shark pup in an artificial uterus（left）and pups after their birth（right）

Title

Successful delivery of viviparous lantern shark from an artificial uterus and the self-production of lantern shark luciferin

URL of the scientific paper（Free to view）

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0291224

Authors

Taketeru Tomita, Minoru Toda, Atsushi Kaneko, Kiyomi Murakumo, Kei Miyamoto, Keiichi Sato (Bold letters: the Okinawa Churashima Foundation Staff)

Journal

PLOS ONE