Walking Sharks Gain a Cousin: Lazy Shark

There are sharks that walk. They use their pectoral and pelvic fins to amble across reef flats, they are small and nocturnal, and the local name for this newest confirmed species, kadedekedewa, translates roughly as "lazy shark." Scientists have now officially identified ten of them.

Hemiscyllium dudgeonae was confirmed by a team from the University of the Sunshine Coast working the shallow reefs of Papua New Guinea's Milne Bay Province. It is named for Christine Dudgeon, a shark geneticist who has studied the genus for two decades and was among the first researchers to handle a live specimen. You can tell it from its nine cousins by a dense freckling of brown spots, white dashes, and a prominent eye-like marking just behind the head.

Walking sharks are homebodies by nature: each species occupies a highly restricted range, lays eggs directly on the seafloor, and rarely strays. H. dudgeonae appears to have the smallest confirmed range of all ten species, currently known only from the Amphlett and Trobriand Islands. Surveys at the nearby D'Entrecasteaux Islands turned up nothing, despite community members reporting the species was once easy to find there.

Somewhere in the Trobriand Islands, a small spotted shark is walking across a reef flat right now, completely unaware it just got a scientific name and a conservation concern.

Read the full story at Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation, June 15, 2026

Hot Take: Altogether now: "Lazy shark doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. Walking shark doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. Kadedekedewa doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo." Welcome to the family.