Christine Dudgeon was searching for a shark she already knew when her flashlight caught one she didn’t. In the shallow reef flats of Milne Bay, off the southeastern tip of Papua New Guinea, a small spotted creature froze in the beam — no more than two and a half feet long, gliding along the seafloor with an unhurried, waddling gait.
Locals had a name for it: kadedekedewa — loosely, “lazy shark.” Science had never given it one.
A waddling stranger on the reef
The name kadedekedewa — “lazy shark” or “dog shark” — tells you something important. Coastal communities in southeastern Papua New Guinea have watched this animal shuffle across reef flats for generations, long before any scientist arrived with a sample bag. The nickname captures its gait precisely: a slow, waddling walk powered by strong pectoral fins used like legs, often with most of its body lifted clear of the water at low tide.
That behavior places it squarely within the Hemiscyllium genus — small sharks commonly called epaulette sharks, ranging across the shallow shores of Australia and the island of New Guinea. They are unlike almost any other shark alive. H. dudgeonae is the first new species identified within this genus since 2013.
Caught in the beam of a flashlight
Christine Dudgeon, an ecologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, was not looking for something new. In March 2025, she was wading through the shallow waters of Milne Bay in search of leopard epaulette sharks — a species already known to science — when her flashlight caught the unfamiliar creature.
She used a technique familiar to fieldworkers: shine the beam directly in front of the shark to freeze it, swim in close, grab it gently, flip it onto its back, and tuck its tail under her armpit to keep it still. Then she passed it up to a colleague in a nearby boat.
That colleague was Jess Blakeway, the study’s lead author and also an ecologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast. One look at the color pattern was enough. “This new one has got lots of spots and dashes that reminded me of braille or morse code,” Blakeway told New Scientist. Nothing about it resembled a leopard epaulette shark. The team spent the following days combing the same waters, catching 12 individuals in total, collecting biological samples from nine before releasing them, and keeping three for further study.
What DNA confirmed — and what it means
Genetic testing settled the question. The sharks were distinct enough from every known walking shark species to qualify as something entirely new. The formal name chosen was Hemiscyllium dudgeonae — Dudgeon’s walking shark — honoring Christine Dudgeon, whose flashlight beam started the whole chain of events.
The species appears to occupy a fairly narrow range. Specimens were collected between the Amphlett Islands and the Trobriand Islands, north of Milne Bay. Researchers suspect the shark may also be present throughout the D’Entrecasteaux and Trobriand island groups, and possibly as far as Muyua Island, roughly 170 miles northeast of Milne Bay. Its preferred habitat seems to be shallow seagrass beds with scattered coral outcrops — environments that rarely attract deep-sea explorers.
Blakeway put it plainly: “A lot of the time, we talk about the deep sea as unknown — we don’t really think of the shallow water as being unknown.” Finding a new shark species in waters just a few feet deep underlines how much remains unrecorded, even close to shore.
Discovered and endangered in the same breath
The discovery arrived with an immediate shadow. Researchers suspect H. dudgeonae may already be at risk of extinction before it has been formally studied. Walking sharks in Papua New Guinea face climate change-driven coral bleaching, habitat loss from coastal development, and pressure from expanding palm-oil plantations. For a species confined to a narrow geographic range, that combination leaves little margin.
The broader group offers a sobering reference point. Before this discovery, nine species of walking shark were recognized — two of them, including the leopard epaulette shark that Dudgeon was originally searching for, are already listed as “vulnerable” by the IUCN.
Researchers plan to return to the region later in 2025. That fieldwork could generate the data needed to support an IUCN “vulnerable” or “endangered” classification for the new species. Blakeway’s assessment was direct: “This species adds to Papua New Guinea’s extraordinary biodiversity, yet it faces local extinction without urgent conservation action.” Whether that action comes in time may depend on how quickly the scientific and policy communities respond to a shark that locals have known about for years — and that the rest of the world is only now beginning to see.