Milne Bay yields a tenth walking shark.
A team working after midnight in the shallow waters of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea, captured a metre-long shark by hand and noticed immediately that its pattern did not match any known species. Where the familiar Milne Bay walking shark carries leopard spots, the new animal displayed white stripes and small brown spots across its body. Over two further nights the researchers collected 11 more individuals — males, females, juveniles and adults — across three sites, all bearing the same distinctive markings over seagrass and coral sea mounts. Genetic analysis confirmed the field diagnosis.
The tenth member of the genus Hemiscyllium, named Hemiscyllium dudgeonae in honour of marine scientist Christine Dudgeon, joins a group of small nocturnal sharks that use their fins to walk when stranded by tides. All ten species are native to shallow coastal waters around Australia and New Guinea, a region shaped by complex tectonic shifts and sea‑level history, and each is identifiable by colour pattern alone. The newly catalogued shark is the first addition to the genus since 2013. Its restricted range may place it at heightened conservation risk, though local communities in Milne Bay have expressed pride in their endemic wildlife.
Sources: University of the Sunshine Coast; Conservation International.
Brazil’s Yanomami operation cuts new mining by 99 per cent.
Satellite monitoring by the Centro Gestor e Operacional do Sistema de Proteção da Amazônia shows that new illegal gold‑mining scars in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory have fallen 99 per cent since the Brazilian government installed a permanent coordinating headquarters in March 2024. More than 10,500 enforcement actions over the past year have seized 249 kilograms of gold, destroyed 907 camps and 87 airstrips, and immobilised 171 barges. In May alone, field teams conducted 310 operations, abording more than a thousand vehicles and inspecting 53 aircraft, while dismantling supply chains that once moved diesel, mercury and equipment deep into the Amazon.
Yet miners have adapted. Large riverside camps have given way to smaller, dispersed groups that push deeper into forest, beyond the reach of satellite detection and often across the Venezuelan border, where remote airstrips remain active. Authorities now describe the campaign as a phase of “scavenging the territory,” with patrols walking 80 to 100 kilometres through jungle to locate sites invisible from above. Indigenous leaders confirm that the majority of invaders have been expelled, though pockets persist in border zones. Health concerns remain acute for isolated communities, who continue to face malaria linked to contaminated rivers.
Sources: Government of Brazil; Instituto Socioambiental.
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Naples poachers strip urchin colonies in nocturnal raids.
A single 75‑minute dive off the coast south of Naples netted 976 purple sea urchins in 2024, and a similar raid this May yielded 500 individuals in under an hour. Poachers working inside the Gaiola Underwater Park use a hookah compressor rig — illegal in Italy — to stay submerged for hours, handing nets of Paracentrotus lividus to boats every 20 minutes. The hauls supply black‑market demand for spaghetti ai ricci, a dish newly fashionable with tourists despite national harvest bans during the May and June spawning season. When the Coast Guard closed in on the May operation, the crew dumped hundreds of urchins and their gear overboard; the three men arrested were repeat offenders.
The systematic removal of urchin colonies is reshaping Naples’ coastal ecology. In balanced systems, sea bream and similar fish graze on urchins, which in turn crop algae and maintain substrate diversity. When poachers strip entire populations, predatory fish abandon the area, leaving legal fishers with empty nets. Marine biologist Maurizio Simeone, director of the Gaiola park, now coordinates overnight surveillance patrols, watching live camera feeds for the bubble trails left by small boats. Italy’s marine protected areas are especially vulnerable: surrounded by waters already emptied of urchins, they become concentrated targets for organised extraction.
Sources: Gaiola Underwater Park; Italian Coast Guard.
The walking sharks persist in shallow water, each species confined to a narrow stretch of reef. The Yanomami forests carry fewer scars than a year ago, though the small crews remain. And off Posillipo, the urchins that do survive the night will graze a little longer before the next moon.
