An adult female sailback houndshark. Image courtesy of Jack Sagumai et al. (2025)
Joel Kontinen
Some sharks have been hidden for more than 50 years but now it has been found in Papua New
Guinea.
The rare sailback houndshark, which has an unusually large dorsal fin, was first
described by scientists in 1973. That was the last record of its existence,
until now.
Adorned with a curiously large and deep dorsal fin, the sailback houndshark (Gogolia filewoodi) was first described by scientists in 1973, when a pregnant female shark was caught in Papua New Guinea’s Astrolabe Bay, near the Gogol River. This single animal remained the only record of the species for decades.
Jack Sagumai at
the World Wildlife Fund-Pacific in Papua New Guinea and his colleagues were
gathering fisheries data directly from local communities as part of a project
supporting the country’s National Plan of Action on Sharks and Rays. In March
2020, they received quite the surprise: photographs of multiple small sharks
caught near the mouth of the Gogol River, all under a meter long and with a
pronounced dorsal fin.
Source:
Jake Buehler 2025 Long-lost sailback shark rediscovered after more than 50 years | New Scientist 26 August
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