{"id":106980,"date":"2025-08-30T04:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T04:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/106980\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T04:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T04:12:07","slug":"a-rare-shark-was-just-found-50-years-after-everybody-believed-it-was-extinct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/106980\/","title":{"rendered":"A Rare Shark Was Just Found 50 Years After Everybody Believed It Was Extinct"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theinertia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1200x695-2-1.png?x76948\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-309441\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-309441\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1200x695-2-1-670x388.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"670\" height=\"388\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-309441\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">screengrab: youtube<\/p>\n<p>        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1756527127_332_favicon-surf.png\" alt=\"The Inertia\" width=\"30\" height=\"30\" class=\"lazyload\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Five decades ago, a single description of the rare sailback houndshark was recorded. The pregnant shark, captured by a fisherman, was small with a wide mouth, short snout, large eyes, and a dorsal fin that resembled a sail on a boat. Scientists named the species Gogolia filewoodi, or the Sailback Houndshark, and it was never seen by scientists again. The assumption was that the already-rare animal had been overfished, but five full decades later, the small shark species has popped back up again in the same region it was originally discovered.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/jfb.70196\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">A new study published this week has verified<\/a> five female sailback houndsharks caught in March 2020 by a fisherman near the mouth of Papua New Guinea\u2019s Gogol River, which drains into Astrolabe Bay. Two years later, another local fisherman caught another sailback houndshark in the same area. This time it was a male, making it the first male of the species ever recorded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnecdotal reports from fishers in Bilbil village and within Madang Lagoon indicate that the species is caught occasionally when fishing within Astrolabe Bay,\u201d they write. \u201cDespite their fishing activity extending throughout Astrolabe Bay and adjacent coast, all observed interactions with G. filewoodi occurred in Astrolabe Bay, close to the Gogol River mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The researchers also noted that local fishers don\u2019t seem to target the sailbacks specifically, pointing out that their \u201cflesh is not well regarded and often given away if in surplus \u2026 and the fins are not high quality for the shark fin trade.\u201d They are calling it a \u201cmicroendemic\u201d species since as far as scientists know, it can only be found in this one part of the world.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Microendemic species are particularly vulnerable to extinction because any changes in their small, very specific habitat can have profound impacts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRare and endemic species are vulnerable to extinction due to their limited distribution range and increasing anthropogenic threats in their habitats,\u201d they wrote. \u201cDespite the present scientific rediscovery, fundamental information is still lacking on its ecology, life history and distribution.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"screengrab: youtube Five decades ago, a single description of the rare sailback houndshark was recorded. The pregnant shark,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,60901,66,4777,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-106980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sailback-houndshark","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-shark","13":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}