New Walking Shark Found in Papua New Guinea Reefs

On a black-water night dive off Papua New Guinea in March 2025, a marine biologist watched a small, freckled shark do something most sharks cannot. Instead of swimming, it ambled across the reef on its fins, picking its way over the coral like a four-legged animal taking a stroll. That sighting has now become science: researchers have formally named Hemiscyllium dudgeonae, a brand-new species of walking shark, and it is the tenth member of one of the strangest little families in the ocean.

The description was published on June 15, 2026 in the Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation by Christine Dudgeon and colleagues at Australia's University of the Sunshine Coast. It is the first new species added to this group of sharks in more than a decade, and the find is a quiet reminder that the sea still hides large, charismatic animals we have never seen.

A shark that walks instead of swims

Walking sharks belong to the genus Hemiscyllium, a cluster of small, bottom-dwelling sharks found only in the shallow waters off Australia and New Guinea. They are often called epaulette sharks because of the bold spot many of them wear behind the head, like a soldier's shoulder badge.

What makes them famous is their gait. Rather than gliding through open water, they push along the seabed by wriggling their bodies and levering themselves forward with their pectoral and pelvic fins, in a motion that looks unmistakably like a four-limbed walk. At low tide they can even haul themselves across exposed reef flats and tide pools, stepping from one patch of water to the next.

Most of these sharks are modest in size, usually around 70 to 80 centimetres long, with the biggest individuals reaching just over a metre. They are nocturnal, harmless to people, and spend their nights nosing through coral and seagrass for worms, crabs and other small prey.

How the new species gave itself away

Finding a new shark is rarely a single dramatic moment. Researchers had been surveying the reefs of Milne Bay province in southeastern Papua New Guinea between 2023 and 2025, building a careful picture of which animals lived there.

It was the pattern on the skin that first caught the eye. Where related walking sharks wear leopard-like spots, this one carried a distinctive mix of brown freckles, white spots and pale dashes, plus the trademark eye-like marking behind the head. Lead researcher Jess Blakeway singled out those white dashes as the giveaway that this was something different.

Genetic testing then confirmed the hunch. DNA showed the animal was a close relative of another walking shark, Hemiscyllium michaeli, yet distinct enough to stand as its own species. The team named it after Christine Dudgeon, a senior research fellow whose night dive first put eyes on the animal.

Local fishers, it turns out, already knew it. In the area it is called 'kadedekedewa', which translates roughly as 'dog shark' or 'lazy shark' — a nod to the unhurried way it potters along the bottom rather than darting through the water.

The youngest sharks on the planet

Here is the detail that makes walking sharks genuinely remarkable. Sharks as a group are ancient, with a lineage stretching back well over 400 million years, older than trees and older than the rings of Saturn. Walking sharks flip that story on its head.

Genetic work on the group suggests they split from their common ancestor only about 9 million years ago, which makes them the youngest known sharks on Earth. In evolutionary terms they are newcomers, still actively branching into fresh species.

Scientists think geography drove the splintering. As sea levels rose and fell and these poor swimmers got cut off in isolated pockets of reef, separated populations slowly became separate species. Walking, in a sense, helped trap them — a shark that prefers to stroll across shallow flats does not cross deep open ocean to mix with its neighbours. The arrival of H. dudgeonae fits that pattern neatly: another isolated population that quietly went its own way.

A survival trick that borders on the unbelievable

The walking gait is only the second-most astonishing thing about this family. Their epaulette relatives are among the toughest animals known when it comes to going without oxygen.

When the tide drops and warm, still pools lose their oxygen, most fish would suffocate. Laboratory studies on the epaulette shark Hemiscyllium ocellatum found it can endure roughly three and a half hours in water with less than five percent of normal oxygen, at tropical temperatures, without losing its ability to right itself, breathe or move.

It does this by slowing its heart rate, throttling back its metabolism and carefully managing blood flow to the brain. Crucially, its brain does not suffer the runaway cell death that would kill most vertebrates starved of oxygen. For a planet facing warming, oxygen-poor seas, an animal that shrugs off conditions that would be lethal to almost everything else is more than a curiosity — it is a small masterclass in resilience.

Discovered and already at risk

The celebration comes with an uncomfortable footnote. Almost as soon as it was named, Hemiscyllium dudgeonae was flagged as vulnerable. The reason is its tiny home range: it appears to live only in a small stretch of reef off southeastern Papua New Guinea, and an animal confined to one small area has nowhere to retreat if that place is damaged.

The threats are familiar across the tropics:

• Coral bleaching driven by warming seas, which strips away the reef habitat these sharks depend on
• Coastal development and the spread of palm-oil plantations, which degrade nearby waters
• Fishing pressure in shallow, accessible habitat where the sharks are easy to reach

The research team hopes its work will support a future assessment on the IUCN Red List, potentially as Vulnerable or Endangered. Several walking shark species are already listed as at risk, and a newcomer with such a small footprint may join them.

Why a one-metre shark is big news

It is easy to assume the age of discovery is over, that the planet has been mapped and catalogued. A freckled shark walking across a reef in the dark says otherwise. Coral reefs remain so rich and so poorly surveyed that a charismatic, metre-long predator can stroll around undocumented until someone happens to drop in at night with a torch.

The find also matters for how we think about evolution. Walking sharks show that even an ancient, much-studied group can keep producing new forms right up to the present day, adapting to a fragmented, shifting world rather than fading from it. That is hopeful and sobering at once.

The sobering part is timing. We are meeting Hemiscyllium dudgeonae at the exact moment its reef home is under strain, which means the same generation that discovered it could decide whether it survives. The next steps are practical: map the full range, count how many there are, and figure out what protection the species needs. For now, there is one solid, slightly magical fact to hold onto — somewhere off Papua New Guinea, a shark is walking across the seafloor, and until last year, nobody knew it existed.