It feels like a scene out of a horror film: a shark that may stroll. In actuality, strolling sharks “are the cutest sharks that you just’ll ever see,” says marine scientist Jessica-Ann Blakeway.
So think about her thrill when she and her staff came across a strolling shark with uncommon markings whereas diving at night time on a reef in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea. This one had “little white dashes alongside its physique and many smaller brown dots,” Blakeway says, not the leopard-like spots of the opposite strolling sharks they’d been surveying.
Hopeful it was a brand new species, the divers looked for extra alongside close by reefs over the next two days in March 2025. They in the end discovered 12 altogether, says Blakeway, of the College of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Genetic assessments revealed that the fish, now dubbed the Dudgeon strolling shark (Hemiscyllium dudgeonae), is new to science. It’s solely the tenth identified species of strolling shark, the staff studies June 15 within the Journal of the Ocean Science Basis. Locals name this slow-moving shark kadedekedewa, which suggests canine shark or lazy shark.
“Sharks generally get a nasty title, however strolling sharks are fairly docile and simple to attach with,” Blakeway says. The fish use their muscular pectoral and pelvis fins to maneuver throughout reefs or the seafloor in an undulating crawl. These small bottom-dwellers have additionally tailored to sluggish their coronary heart and respiration to outlive out of the water for just a few hours. This enables them to hunt for crabs, worms or small fish trapped in shallow swimming pools at low tide.
The brand new species was an surprising discovery throughout surveys to study extra concerning the distributions of two different strolling sharks, the leopard strolling shark (H. michaeli) and the Papuan strolling shark (H. hallstromi). “To our data and primarily based on interviews with native communities, the species don’t overlap,” Blakeway says.
The area’s tectonic exercise remoted strolling shark populations over thousands and thousands of years, the staff proposes. Since these sharks have very small ranges, they’re much more susceptible to reef degradation and fishing stress. 5 of the ten species are presently listed as threatened with extinction on the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature’s Purple Checklist.
That ought to increase an alarm for extra than simply the sharks, Blakeway says. “Strolling sharks are fairly hardy, so in the event that they’re struggling … different marine species will likely be struggling as properly.”
