Sagumai et al. / Journal of Fish Biology, 2025Every 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.”
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.
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. Elusive Sailback Shark Rediscovered After 50 Years
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Norwegian scientists studying marine life in the Pacific Ocean have successfully tested a robotic shark spotter. The robot resembles a lemon-coloured surfing board. It detects a shark at a distance of up to 300 metres and reports its discovery to researchers via a satellite.The device has already been used for spotting great whites. Tags: 
A great white shark seems to keep its distance from its fellow white sharks. Even when I have had the opportunity to have as many as five white sharks circling around me, they still keep a respectable distance from each other and rarely came close to each other. Then on the other hand, you have hammerhead sharks that can be seen swimming in large schools. Lemon sharks or various types of reef sharks congregating in the tens and sometimes hundreds. And I have seen seasonal congregations of up to 4-5 foot leopard sharks and guitarfish in Southern California, presumably part of a breeding behavior. The social interactions of sharks is not well understood. Each species has its own type of behavior and while the general public thinks of sharks as somewhat solitary (which they often can be), in reality it is more likely a very complex relationship that revolves around feeding, breeding, and a predator's sense of territoriality (ie: survival). In Australia, one researcher is specifically focusing his efforts on understanding the social behavior of sharks. Working in conjunction with the 
