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Walking shark found in Papua New Guinea is new to science

James Woodford — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:41 +0000

The newly identified walking shark, Hemiscyllium dudgeonae

MV Erdmann

A shark that can walk with most of its body out of the water, found on the shores of Papua New Guinea, has been identified as a new species.

Locals have long been aware of the strange fish, which they sometimes see waddling across reef flats at low tide. They call it kadedekedewa, which means “dog shark” or “lazy shark”.

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Sharks in the genus Hemiscyllium, commonly known as walking sharks or epaulette sharks, use their pectoral fins like legs to move around and are only known to be in Australia and New Guinea.

The new species has been named Hemiscyllium dudgeonae after at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, who was part of the team that formally identified it.

She first encountered the shark after midnight one day in March 2025, swimming in just a metre of water covering a meadow of seagrass in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea.

Dudgeon was looking for a different species, Hemiscyllium michaeli, known to inhabit nearby waters. “Because it was so late and I had been in the water for a while, I was a bit over it,” she says. “Then I just saw one swimming along the bottom.”

She shone her torch in front of the shark, which was nearly three-quarters of a metre long, making it freeze as a defensive response. Then she grabbed it and gently employed a jiujitsu-like move that researchers call the “flip and tuck”. “You sort of just flip them over and tuck the tail under your armpit and it stops them from wriggling away,” she says.

Christine Dudgeon with the shark named after her, Hemiscyllium dudgeonae

Nesha Ichida

Once the shark was secure, she handed it over to her colleague, , who was in a boat drifting nearby.

“Straight away, just from the colour pattern, I could see it was very distinctively different to the other species that we work with and the other species that we know of,” says Blakeway, who is also at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

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The other nine species of walking shark we know of, which all feed on small invertebrates that live on the seafloor, are very similar in their body size and shape. They are most easily distinguished from each other by their skin patterning and colouring.

The species that the team had been expecting to find has a more leopard-like pattern. “This new one has got lots of spots and dashes that reminded me of Braille or Morse code,” says Blakeway.

Over the next few days at three nearby locations, the researchers caught another 11 individuals, three of which were kept for further study and nine of which had samples taken from them before being released.

The species is thought to live only among the coral reefs of Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea

Nesha Ichida

Once back in the laboratory, the team carried out DNA tests that confirmed the new shark was genetically distinct from all the other species in the genus.

Papua New Guinea’s walking sharks face grave threats from habitat loss caused by coastal development, expansion of palm oil plantations and coral bleaching.

The researchers think H. dudgeonae is found only in Milne Bay and it is probably the most endangered of all the species in the group.

“This species adds to Papua New Guinea’s extraordinary biodiversity, yet it faces local extinction without urgent conservation action,” says Blakeway.

Journal reference:

Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation

Arctic Ocean reaches tipping point that could be dire for marine life

Alec Luhn — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:06:16 +0000

Disappearing sea ice is letting more sunlight in the Arctic Ocean and boosting phytoplankton growth, but this has depleted a crucial nutrient, which could severely affect animals higher up the food chain

Millions of fossil whale bones found in deep-ocean ‘necropolis’

James Woodford — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:00:37 +0000

Fossils including possible baleen-whale ribs found at a depth of 5656 metres in the Indian Ocean

Global TREnD, IDSSE

The world’s deepest known whale graveyard has been discovered in the southern Indian Ocean at a depth of 7 kilometres. The remains found there include a new species of extinct beaked whale and other fossils that are over 5 million years old. In early 2023, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues undertook 32 dives in a crewed submersible along 1200 kilometres of the seafloor, in an area known as the Diamantina Zone.

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The expedition was part of the Global Hadal Exploration Programme, an effort led by Chinese scientists to explore all the deepest parts of the planet’s oceans, which range from 6000 to 11,000 metres below the surface. At these depths there is no light, and life must survive on what falls from the surface or generate its own energy from chemicals – known as chemosynthesis. The first whale fossils were found at a depth of 7002 metres in a part of the Diamantina Zone known as the Dordrecht Deep, which is over 1100 kilometres south-west of Perth, Western Australia. “With the sub’s powerful lighting system, we could see tens of metres around us on the otherwise pitch-dark seafloor,” says Zhou. What they saw was “a little scary, but also incredibly fascinating”, he says. The researchers estimated there were up to 760 individual whales per square kilometre, including both ancient and recent carcasses, constituting what they have called a “whale necropolis” and a “deep-sea fossil megasite”. The recently fallen carcasses, which included a 5-metre-long Antarctic minke whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis), provide food to a thriving ecosystem of invertebrates – such as bone-eating worms and brittle stars – many thought to be new species, found in densities of up to 2800 individuals per square metre. “It felt profoundly special,” says Zhou. “We were looking at the final resting place of millions of whales – some over 5 million years old – a deep-time archive of evolution and deep-sea life. It was humbling and awe-inspiring, and we treated the site with the respect it deserves.”

The manipulator arm of the submersible Fendouzhe collected whale fossil bones on the deep seafloor

Global TREnD, IDSSE

Altogether, the team found 485 active whale-fall and fossil-whale sites during their expedition. Using the submersible’s robotic arms, they collected 43 fossil specimens that were dated to between 120,000 and 5.26 million years old. Among the younger fossils, most were beaked whales belonging to two living species, Andrews’ beaked whale (Mesoplodon bowdoini) and the strap-toothed whale (Mesoplodon layardii). So far, the team has formally described one new species, named Pterocetus diamantinae. However, they also collected several fragmentary specimens that may include further species that are unknown to science, says team member at the University of Pisa, Italy. at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, another team member, says there are a number of factors that mean the whales have been so well preserved. Most of these fossils are beaked whales’ rostra, or snouts. “They’re hyper dense, almost like bone armour, which makes them physically resistant to degradation and less palatable to bone borers,” says Peng.

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Only about 0.05 to 0.55  millimetres of sediment has been deposited per thousand years, over the past 5 million years in this region, and many of these bones are coated with ferromanganese oxides, which effectively seals them off from the surrounding environment. “So it’s really a combination of bone density, slow burial, and mineral coatings that has allowed these bones to escape being eaten for over 5 million years,” says Peng. The team thinks that a number of factors have led to such a concentration of whale deaths in the Diamantina Zone, including a whale-migration route passing through the area and a V-shaped topography that funnels the carcasses to the trench floor. at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who was not part of the study, described the find as an “amazing discovery”. “The density of the whale-fall remains is incredible,” he says.

Journal reference:

Nature

The last-ditch plan to save coral reefs from utter destruction

Thomas Lewton — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 15:00:22 +0000

First test of CO2 removal with green sand finds no harm to marine life

Alec Luhn — Fri, 15 May 2026 14:41:05 +0000

Adding olivine to the ocean could remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and a pilot project in New York state found no signs of adverse effects on seafloor organisms

Coral reefs on a remote archipelago shrugged off a massive heatwave

James Woodford — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:00:58 +0000

The Houtman Abrolhos Islands, off Western Australia, where corals appear to be exceptionally heat-tolerant

Bill Bachman/Alamy

Coral reefs on a chain of islands off Western Australia were almost untouched by a prolonged heatwave that devastated corals in other regions in early 2025. Researchers hope that learning the secret of extreme heat tolerance in these corals will help to protect reefs across the globe, which are in danger of being wiped out by global warming. at the University of Western Australia in Perth and her colleagues dived at 11 sites across the Houtman Abrolhos archipelago in July 2025.

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Further north at the Ningaloo Reef, up to 60 per cent of corals died during the same heatwave. This was a story repeated at reefs around the world, with marine heatwaves in 2025 killing vast swathes of coral globally. But at Houtman Abrolhos, apart from a few tiny patches, there weren’t even any signs of stress, such as fluorescing coral. “We expected to see mass bleaching with lots of white colonies, and likely mortality of reefs, given we did surveys after many months of marine heatwave. We did not see this,” says Quigley. Prolonged heat stress generally leads to coral bleaching, when corals expel the symbiotic algae that live in their tissues, which provide most of their food. Researchers measure the heat stress faced by corals in (DHW), which accounts for how long a heatwave endures and how high temperatures reach. Over 4 °C-weeks, scientists expect to see significant bleaching and above 8 °C-weeks, the situation becomes dire. “Values of around 8 °C-weeks are generally considered catastrophic and are often associated with widespread bleaching and mortality,” says Quigley. The waters around the Houtman Abrolhos Islands hit 4 °C-weeks in early February 2025 and 8 °C-weeks by early March, but the temperatures kept rising and by mid-April the corals had experienced 22 °C-weeks of heat stress. Quigley and her colleagues were most surprised to find that the full array of coral species at the reef all seemed immune to what had proved disastrous elsewhere. To try to determine just how heat-tolerant the coral at the Houtman Abrolhos Islands actually are, the scientists brought colonies from several species back to the lab and subjected them to prolonged high temperatures. At 8 °C-weeks, compared with currently accepted thresholds, survival rates at the Houtman Abrolhos islands were twice as high and bleaching resistance was nearly four times higher. There was still nearly 100 per cent survival at around 16 °C-weeks. While the upper limit of the tolerance of corals there is still unclear, it is “clearly substantial and higher than what has been documented at other reef locations studied so far around the world”, says Quigley.

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The next step for the researchers is to work out exactly how the corals are achieving this survival feat. Because resistance was across many species, Quigley says it is possibly the algal symbionts that are giving the Houtman Abrolhos island corals their superpower. “I think this location has a particular set of environmental factors that has driven the evolution of heat tolerance generally for the species that live there,” she says. Because of this, such reefs should be given the highest level of protection, and other similar high-tolerance sites should also be identified, she says. at the Great Barrier Reef Foundation says such reefs serve as “natural laboratories for understanding heat tolerance”. “They may also hold the key to advancing selective breeding and other interventions aimed at enhancing thermal resilience in conservation aquaculture and coral restoration,” says Lundgren. While focusing on curbing global carbon emissions remains the most critical action to save these precious ecosystems, “providing adaptive assistance by, for example, seeding reefs with more heat-tolerant corals will give coral reefs their best chance at adapting to future heat stress events,” she says.

Journal reference:

Current Biology:

First glimpse of sperm whale birth reveals teamwork to support newborn

James Woodford — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:00:42 +0000

Female sperm whales hold the newborn calf above water until it can swim on its own

Project CETI

A sperm whale giving birth has been assisted by 10 other females in her social unit – the first time such an event has ever been observed in non-primates.

In July 2023, scientists who have been monitoring a group of sperm whales in the Caribbean since 2005 noticed that all 11 females in the group had gathered near the surface. By chance, the researchers had drones in the air and were able to observe and record the event.

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Shortly afterwards, the flukes of a calf started emerging from its mother. The delivery took place over the next half hour, during which the other females coordinated themselves into a highly synchronised formation to protect the mother and newborn.

As soon as the calf was born, the female whales gathered around and took turns making sure that it was kept lifted at the surface so it could breathe and had time for its flukes to fully unfurl. In the first few hours, newborn sperm whales aren’t buoyant and cannot stay at the surface on their own, so such assistance is thought to be critical to prevent calves from drowning.

“This is the first evidence of birth assistance in non-primates,” says team member at Project CETI in New York.

He says such complex behaviour was once thought to be exclusive to humans, and has only recently been seen in non-human primates.

“Sperm whale society is driven by strong female leadership in which knowledge is shared across generations of females,” says Gero. “It is fascinating to see the intergenerational support from the grandmother to her labouring daughter, and the support from the other, unrelated females.”

When short-finned pilot whales arrived about 18 minutes after the birth, the team observed clear defensive responses from the adult female sperm whales.

The newborn sperm whale emerges from the water post birth (bottom right) and is supported by adult females

Project CETI

“They consistently positioned at least one adult between the newborn and the pilot whales, including from below,” says team member at Northeastern University London. “On multiple occasions, adults opened their jaws and jerked their heads toward approaching pilot whales. In one instance, a pilot whale rammed into the nose of the adult female closest to the newborn at high speed. The sperm whales also changed direction when pilot whales swam directly in front of the cluster.”

The researchers had deployed underwater audio recording equipment to monitor the sperm whales’ calls as part of a separate study.

“On the acoustic side, what we found is striking,” says Petri. “We detected statistically significant shifts in the overall vocal style at key moments: the onset of labour and the first interactions with pilot whales.”

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These shifts were well beyond the normal variation seen in the unit’s everyday socialising, he says. Once the critical moments around the birth had passed, the group’s vocal style returned to baseline.

The combination of the acoustics and the observations allowed the researchers to “connect what these animals do with what they say”, says Petri.

Gero says the team hasn’t yet been able to determine the calf’s sex. “We’re hoping to see the newborn in the field in the next few months, in which case we would give it a name. But we know it has survived the critical first year of its life in which calf mortality is very high.”

Journal reference:

Science

Journal reference:

Scientific Reports

Toxic algae blighting South Australia could pose a global threat

James Woodford — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 14:00:05 +0000

Researchers warn that the alga Karenia cristata, which has killed around a million animals in Australian waters in one of the biggest algal blooms ever seen, could harm marine life elsewhere

Orcas are ganging up on great white sharks to eat their livers

Grace Wade — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 05:00:20 +0000

Orcas push a juvenile great white shark up to the surface in a clever hunting manoeuvre

Marco Villegas

Orcas in the Gulf of California have been hunting juvenile great white sharks using a clever tactic: flipping them upside down to render them immobile. The discovery suggests there may be a previously unrecognised group of orcas in the region that specialises in hunting sharks. Only a few orca populations are known to , and even fewer have been found to eat great whites (Carcharodon carcharias). For example, orcas (Orcinus orca) off the coast of San Francisco were , and a great white carcass near Australia showed signs of an orca attack in . But until recently, there had only been one known instance, recorded in South Africa, of the animals preying on juvenile great white sharks.

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, an independent marine biologist in Mexico, and his colleagues captured video footage of orcas in the Gulf of California hunting juvenile great white sharks on two separate occasions. The first, recorded in August 2020, showed five female orcas working together to push a young great white to the surface. “The orcas were ramming the great white to flip it upside down,” says Higuera. The manoeuvre forced the shark into a state of temporary paralysis, called tonic immobility. It also allowed the orcas to get at the shark’s energy-rich liver, which they shared amongst themselves. A few minutes later, the pod repeated the attack on a different adolescent great white. In August 2022, the research team recorded another group of five orcas using the same technique to hunt a young great white around the same location at the same time of year. The researchers identified some of the orcas in the first incident as those previously spotted hunting whale sharks and bull sharks. Footage from the second incident wasn’t clear enough to determine whether these orcas belonged to the same pod. “But it is highly possible,” says Higuera. Orca populations drastically differ depending on where they are located. “Orcas are hunting machines. They are like snipers – they use specific hunting strategies, very specific ones depending on their prey,” says Higuera. These findings suggest the orcas belong to a previously unrecognised shark-eating group, he says. “So now we have an example of another unique feeding strategy that probably isn’t shared by any other group of [orcas] in the world,” says at the University of British Columbia in Canada. However, more research is needed to know for sure, as the orcas could be an offshoot of those from the Pacific Northwest that hunt other types of sharks, he says.

Journal reference:

Frontiers in Marine Science

Underwater volcanic brine pools could be home to extreme life forms

Alex Wilkins — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 07:00:50 +0000

An expedition in the Red Sea found several brine pools that appear to be fed by underwater volcanoes, which may be home to microbes and animals with unique adaptations

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Walking shark found in Papua New Guinea is new to science

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Arctic Ocean reaches tipping point that could be dire for marine life

Millions of fossil whale bones found in deep-ocean ‘necropolis’

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The last-ditch plan to save coral reefs from utter destruction

First test of CO2 removal with green sand finds no harm to marine life

Coral reefs on a remote archipelago shrugged off a massive heatwave

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First glimpse of sperm whale birth reveals teamwork to support newborn

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Toxic algae blighting South Australia could pose a global threat

Orcas are ganging up on great white sharks to eat their livers

Underwater volcanic brine pools could be home to extreme life forms

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