The discovery of a new species of shark would be note-worthy. The discovery of a new species of walking shark is just plain amazing.
Scientists at the Western Australian Museum have identified a new species of Bamboo shark (a species that uses their pectoral and pelvic fins to “walk” along the bottom) off the east coast of Indonesia.
It’s no man-eater, though. The newly named Hemiscyllium Halmahera reaches about 28 inches in length, and from the looks of it, just wants to be left alone.
Dr Gerald Allen, a research associate at the Western Australian Museum, along with a team of scientists, captured two specimens of the small shark near Ternate, in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia.
In last month’s aqua International Journal, Dr Allen wrote, “Its features include a general brown colouration with numerous clusters of mainly 2-3 dark polygonal spots, widely scattered white spots in the matrix between dark clusters, relatively few, large dark spots on the interorbital/snout region, a pair of large dark marks on the ventral surface of the head, and a fragmented post-cephalic mark consisting of a large U-shaped dark spot with a more or less continuous white margin on the lower half, followed by a vertical row of three, smaller clusters of 2-3 polygonal dark marks.”
