Elusive Sailback Shark Rediscovered After 50 Years

Elusive Sailback Shark Rediscovered After 50 Years

Every so often the animal kingdom just throws out a curveball that we’re not prepared for—like in 1970 when fishermen reeled in a freakish-looking shark and then it was never seen again.

Well 50 years later, that shark—so unique that it was declared a new genus—has finally been found again, confirming that the fishermen’s encounter wasn’t just a well-remembered dream.

Meet the sailback houndshark, believed to be endemic to the water’s of Papua New Guinea, and perhaps even to a single stretch of ocean called Astrolabe Bay. A group of fisherfolk reported that 5 of the sharks had been caught while a team of scientists were on the island conducting research for the country’s National Plan of Action on Sharks and Rays.

They had been caught incidentally at the mouth of a river that drains into the Astrolabe Bay, but had been sold as secondary catch since the meat is not prized by locals. Two years later, another was caught that turned out to be the first male sailfin houndshark ever seen.

A male and a female of the species were recently featured in a paper published in the Journal of Fish Biology. A curious predator, they have a large head but small mouth, and true to their name sport an elongated fin reminiscent of a sail on a yacht. Luckily for the shark, it is considered inferior on the market for Asian shark fin.

“Much remains unknown about its biology, ecology and population dynamics,” study corresponding author Jack Sagumai from the WWF Pacific division told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Support is still needed to better understand the life history and ecology of this species.”

OCEANIC WONDERS: First-Known Sighting of a ‘Massive’ Antarctic Squid is Caught on Camera During Nat Geo Expedition

Papua New Guinea has several shark species known to inhabit nowhere else in the world’s oceans, so it’s possible the sailfin is one more of these so-called “microendemic” populations. Susceptible to even small changes in ecosystem, it’s likely the shark will require protection, but the first step to knowing how is to know the species, and the first scientific description will go a long way toward achieving that.

MORE SHARK SPECIES: 500 Baby Sharks to be Released in Unprecedented Rewilding of the Ocean

The authors write that the animal embodies “a unique evolutionary lineage of triakid sharks” (or houndsharks, containing about 40 species across nine genera) and that uniqueness could make it an important marine biodiversity “icon” for Papua New Guinea.

“Monitoring and management options are currently being initiated as a precautionary approach to conserve this unique and rare species of shark,” the authors conclude.

We Know About It: Now We Can Protect It: Spread The Word On Social Media…