via inside science nonetheless this specimen like many albinos of various species that have been observed had not yet reached adulthood in a lot of cases albinos generally dont make it very large because they get eaten ebert said theyre vulnerable to predators ocean depth typically affects the coloration of marine life along general patterns many creatures higher in the water column are darker on top so that from above they appear to blend in with deep water and from below they blend in with the bright surface said jennifer bigman a biology doctoral candidate at simon fraser university in vancouver canada albinism could affect this if youre albino whether thats complete or partial youre going to be more visible than an individual of the same size that has normal pigmentation said bigman who published a study in 2015 on the discovery of an albino aleutian skate and a partial albino roughtail skate both found in shallow and deep pacific waters off the coast of the united states more sunscreen pollution accelerating demise of coral reefs experts say raylike skates which are related to sharks and more distantly to ghost sharks spend much of their time on the seafloor camouflaged with the substrate roughtail skates are typically purplish while aleutians are usually brown being albino even partially so could put them at a disadvantage to predators hovering around above them furthermore these individuals may not be able to sneak up on prey as easily being an albino species would result in lower fitness bigman said researchers are unsure why some of these deep water species even have pigment in the first place some species down there are naturally white or translucent making the effects of albinism at those depths even more of a mystery despite the potentially negative impacts of lacking pigmentation some albino sharks do survive just enough to ensure the occasional continuation of the rare albino genes were not seeing the true prevalence of albinism bigman said as marine biologists were mostly looking at dead individuals ebert said that little is known anyway about deepwater sharks even less is known about the rare albino specimens that pop up and how their lack of pigmentation may affect their survival fitness or ability to mate the deep sea is horribly underexplored he said inside science is an editorially independent nonprofit print electronic and video journalism news service owned and operated by the american institute of physics inside science