A new species of whaler shark, Carcharhinus obsolerus, has been identified based on three specimens originally collected from the Western Central Pacific in the 1940s.
William White, Peter Kyne and Mark Harris described their findings in the latest issue of the journal PLOS One. The researchers believe that this species might already be extinct, however, which is why they gave it the name “the lost shark.”
According to the report, “the historic range of C. obsolerus sp. nov. is under intense fishing pressure and this species has not been recorded anywhere in over 80 years. There is an urgent need to assess its extinction risk status for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. With so few known records, there is a possibility that Carcharhinus obsolerus sp. nov. has been lost from the marine environment before any understanding could be gained of its full historic distribution, biology, ecosystem role, and importance in local fisheries.”
Whaler sharks are one of the most economically important groups of sharks in fisheries globally, particularly in tropical regions, in commercial and small-scale coastal fisheries. The three sub-adult specimens were originally collected near Borneo, Thailand and Vietnam.