Supersharks: a new threat from Svalbard… or an opportunity?

8 September 2008, 2344 EDT

The Scotsman reports on this frightening development:

SCIENTISTS have been stunned by the discovery of a shark that had eaten a polar bear.

Part of the jaw of a young polar bear was found in the stomach of a Greenland shark in Svalbard, northern Norway.

Kit Kovacs, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, said: “We’ve never heard of this before.

“We don’t know how it got there. We can’t say whether or not the shark took a swimming young bear or ate a carcase.

“We don’t know how active these sharks are as predators.”

But perhaps these sharks could prove a valuable ally in the coming struggle against the Panzerbjørn? Our government must take steps to open diplomatic channels as soon as possible.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.