Skip to content
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Menu
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Happy News

The “Extinct” Sea Creature That Just Returned

East London resident Mike Vincent made a discovery that sent shockwaves through South Africa’s marine conservation community when he found the remains of what experts believe is a large-tooth sawfish washed up on a beach south of the Birah River Mouth. This marks the first known sawfish sighting in South African waters since 1999, when the last recorded individual was released alive from KwaZulu-Natal shark nets, making Vincent’s find a potentially game-changing moment for marine conservation. Sawfish, despite their misleading appearance, are actually rays rather than sharks, easily recognizable by their long, flattened snouts edged with tooth-like structures called rostrums, and they’re considered the most endangered elasmobranchs globally.

East London Museum’s Kevin Cole immediately recognized the significance of the find and rushed to collect samples for further study. Knowing that both species known to occur in South Africa, the green sawfish and the large-tooth sawfish, had been presumed locally extinct due to habitat loss and destructive fishing methods like gillnetting. While one sawfish doesn’t signal a full species recovery, conservation experts say it represents something precious: possibility. The discovery has reignited calls for restoring critical estuarine habitats and protecting marine heritage, proving that sometimes the most important conservation victories come from unexpected beach walks. This remarkable sighting reminds us that nature can surprise us even when we think all hope is lost, and that our oceans may still hold secrets we thought were gone forever.

PrevPreviousBlue the Leopard Tortoise’s Recovery Miracle
NextTwo Doses Outperformed Traditional Depression TherapiesNext

Recent Articles

Happy News

Scientists May Have Finally “Seen” Dark Matter

May 9, 2026

For nearly a century, dark matter has been one of the greatest mysteries in all of science. We know it exists as it makes up an estimated 85% of the universe’s total mass and acts as invisible gravitational scaffolding holding galaxies together, but no one has ever directly observed it.

Read More
Happy News

Coral Reefs Are Hiding An Almost Entirely Unstudied Universe Of Potential Medicine

May 9, 2026

Scientists at the University of Galway and an international consortium have discovered that coral reefs contain an almost entirely unstudied universe of microbial life, publishing a study in Nature that reconstructed the genomes of 645 microbial species from 99 coral reefs across 32 Pacific islands, with more than 99 percent

Read More
Happy News

A Rare Superbloom Is Turning Part Of Redwood National Park Purple And There Are Only Weeks To See It

May 9, 2026

Something extraordinary and fleeting is happening right now in Northern California, where the Bald Hills grasslands above the redwood canopy in Redwood National Park have erupted into a rare lupine superbloom, turning a stretch of elevated landscape off a remote road near Orick into a sweeping sea of purple, blue,

Read More
« Previous Next »
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2026 HappyNews.