Jess Blakeway squinted through the dim blue glow of the dive light as her supervisor, Dr. Christine Dudgeon, cradled a small shark in her arms—its body marked with unexpected white dashes like brushstrokes across wet sand. It was October 2023 in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea, and in that moment, a new chapter in shark science began. This was no ordinary epaulette shark; it was a species never before documented by science, now formally named Hemiscyllium dudgeonae, or Dudgeon’s Walking Shark, in honor of Dr. Dudgeon’s decades of pioneering work on elasmobranch genetics and ecology.

The discovery, confirmed through genetic analysis at the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC) and published in Zenodo, marks the first new species in the Hemiscyllium genus in over a decade. Found only in a narrow stretch of shallow reef off southeastern New Guinea, this nocturnal, four-finned crawler moves like a lizard across exposed flats at low tide, feeding on invertebrates and avoiding predators with a gait so peculiar it earned it the local name kadedekedewa—"dog shark" or "lazy shark." The telltale white dashes along its brown body distinguished it immediately from its leopard-spotted relatives.

Led by Ph.D. student Jess Blakeway, the research team conducted 70 surveys across 15 locations, using snorkeling, diving, and reef walking to gently capture and study the sharks by hand. Over two nights, they found 12 individuals with identical patterning, confirming a new species through DNA sequencing back in Australia. The study also reshaped long-held assumptions: rather than being separated by rivers or deep channels, multiple walking shark species share overlapping ranges in eastern PNG—though they never occur together.

Of the ten known Hemiscyllium species now documented in Papua New Guinea, five are already classified as threatened on the IUCN Red List due to their extremely limited habitats—a designation that applies to just 3% of all shark species. With habitat degradation, coastal fishing, and climate change looming, the team plans to return in October to gather critical data for assessing H. dudgeonae’s conservation status.

This discovery is more than a scientific milestone—it’s a reminder that even in an age of satellites and genomics, Earth still holds intimate, walkable wonders waiting to be noticed in the flicker of a dive light. And sometimes, they’re named after those who’ve spent a lifetime listening to the ocean’s quietest voices.