Divers in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, were amazed when a glimmer of white in the sand turned out to be a rare leucistic leopard shark.
“It was just a normal dive,” says Mega Aurine, dive and activities manager and PADI instructor at Misool Resort. “We were looking at a cute frogfish when a big white shape below me caught my eye.”
They dropped down and edged a little closer to see what it was and the ghostly white shape moved across the sand. It was a leopard shark (Stegostoma fasciatum). Just to confuse things, some people also call these animals zebra sharks – both are correct depending where you are in the world.
“We never expected to see a leopard shark on that dive, and definitely not a rare white one,” says Aurine.
Aurine's video, which was shared on Instagram, was sent to marine scientists and it turned out that this shark may have been seen in the Misool Marine Reserve more than 10 years before in 2015.
“Finding out that it has probably been in the area for over a decade is amazing,” says Aurine.
The 2.2-long male is white because of a rare genetic condition called leucism. This “causes partial pigment loss, giving the animal a pale or white appearance while still retaining its normal dark eye colour,” writes the shark rewilding programme ReShark. “Unlike albinism, it’s a pigment cell deficiency rather than a complete absence of melanin.”
The scientists have named the shark Pa'le from the Papuan word ‘pace’, which means mister, and ‘bule’, which is the Indonesian word for a white person.
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Top image credit: Misool Marine Reserve, Raja Ampat
