Found but Lost: Newly

Discovered Shark May

Be Extinct
Carcharhinus obsolerus (that’s Latin for “extinct”) swam
in the waters of the western Pacific, but it hasn’t been seen
in 80-plus years

Over the past two decades, more than 260 new species of shark have been
discovered by researchers around the world, increasing the number of known
species by more than 20 percent.

Now we can add one more to the list. A paper published Jan. 2 in the
journal PLOS ONE describes a striking new shark species from the waters off
the coasts of Borneo, Thailand and Vietnam. It looks like some similar “whaler
shark” species—a genus that also includes the well-known bull shark and
blacktip shark—but its teeth, snout, fins and vertebrae are distinctive enough
that scientists have declared it to be its own species.

There’s just one problem: The shark was identified from decades-old museum
samples and hasn’t been seen in the wild since the 1930s.

That’s why the researchers have named the species “lost shark.”
More formally they’ve dubbed it Carcharhinus obsolerus—the second word in
the taxonomic name is Latin for “extinct.”

Despite the name, researchers still hope a game of hide-and-seek might find
evidence that lost sharks still exist.

“It is quite possible that the lost shark still roams the coastal waters of the
South China Sea, but it was so named because we could not locate specimens”
in museum collections or the wild, says coauthor Peter M. Kyne, a
conservation biologist and senior research fellow at Australia’s Charles Darwin
University.

Of course, we don’t know exactly where to look, as “lost shark” was actually
only officially observed three times—two juvenile specimens and a late-term
embryo. The original researchers that collected the specimens decades ago
never adequately described the species, so the current team has taken steps to
complete that process, even though the creature’s historic range and role in
the ecosystem are not understood.

Why take the effort to describe the lost shark now, so long after it was last
seen? As noted in the paper, similar coastal fish species in Southeast Asia
currently face enormous pressure from human activity. Last year the Asia
Foundation went so far as to say that many marine species in the area are
“near collapse from overfishing.” That makes it critical to identify all of the
species—shark or otherwise—that swim in the region so we know what needs
to be protected before they disappear for good.

More broadly, the identification of lost shark relates to a bigger initiative, the
ongoing Global Shark Trends Project, which aims to assess the extinction risk
of the world’s shark and ray species (collectively known as chondrichthyan
species) by the end of next year. That’s a necessary process for the nations that
signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, which by 2020 must ensure
that their fisheries are sustainable and that further extinctions are avoided.

As part of the shark-trends project, Kyle says they will spend the coming year
examining the conservation status of many other newly described shark
species.

Meanwhile there’s hope that by formally identifying and naming this species,
even decades after its last sighting, it may be “lost” no more.

That’s happened in the past. “A close relative, the Borneo shark, was once
thought to be lost, with no records since 1937,” Kyne points out. “It was
rediscovered in 2004 during fish-market surveys. We hope that the lost shark
can be re-found in the future, and so we don’t formally consider it to be
extinct.”

It may need a new taxonomic name if that rediscovery ever comes to pass, but
for now the lost shark’s name is a reminder of the pressure other shark species
face from overfishing—and a hope that other species won’t also disappear.