The world’s first walking shark could be named after a global corporation, in an attempt to raise cash for wildlife conservation.

The right to name the shark and nine other newly discovered creatures is being opened up to businesses at auction this month. It is the first big sell-off of the right to create a name for creatures new to science, and will be hosted by Prince Albert II of Monaco. Businesses and individuals will be allowed to name the creatures after anyone or anything, even a product.

The names of new species are traditionally chosen by the people who discover them and usually highlight a physical feature of the specimen. An estimated 10 to 15 per cent are named in honour of a family member, a friend or someone whose work deserves recognition, such as Sir David Attenborough who has had an echidna named after him.

The ten species at the auction were discovered by the US-based Conservation International during a survey of Indonesian wildlife. Among them are the first walking shark — which has uniquely arranged pectoral fins for moving on coral reefs — a pipefish and a lionfish. If the suggested starting bids are achieved, the sale will raise more than $1.85 million (£900,000).

In 2004 a monkey discovered in Bolivia became known as the GoldenPalace.com monkey after the equivalent of £400,000 was bid by an internet gaming business. The monkey’s official name is Callicebus aureipalatii, the genus followed by a rough translation into Latin of “Golden Palace”.

All of the creatures in the auction have been discovered since 2001, during exploration of the Bird’s Head Seascape off the northwest of the coast of Papua. The diversity of life found was so extensive and unexpected that scientists called it a “lost world”. Most astonishing was the walking shark, which was found in Cenderawasih Bay and is the sale’s star lot with a starting price of $500,000.

Researchers set a record in one part of the ecosystem when they found 335 species of coral reef fish on a single dive, close to Triton Bay. Almost 1,300 reef fish species have now been identified in the seascape. About 600 species of reef-building corals have been found there — more than three quarters of the known species.

Until the surveys were carried out the area suffered from increasing blast and cyanide fishing, shark-finning, turtle poaching and strip mining.

The research provided the impetus for a conservation programme.

One of the lots on offer is the chance to name a patrol boat. A tuna long-liner from the Indonesian fleet will be bought and refitted as a customised vessel for patrolling reefs. Funds raised by the auction, which also includes the right to join an expedition to discover more unknown sea creatures aboard a luxury dive boat, will be used to protect the region’s wildlife.

The Blue Auction will be held on September 20 at the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, with Hugh Edmeades, chairman of Christie’s, as auctioneer. It is hoped that individuals and organisations will participate, but seats are by invitation only. Other interested parties can bid in absentia.

Peter Seligmann, chairman of Conservation International, said: “Protecting the Bird’s Head Seascape and its amazing marine life is a top priority. This is the first time naming rights to multiple species have been auctioned to raise urgently needed marine conservation funding.”

Walking shark

Hemiscyllium your name here
Suggested opening bid $500,000
One of two species of walking epaulet sharks found in the region.
It uses pectoral fins to walk along the reefs but can swim to escape

Fairy basslet

Pseudanthias your name here
Suggested opening bid $150,000
Form in huge shoals above reefs in Cendrawasih Bay.
They mature as females but later turn into males

Flasher wrasse

Paracheilinus your name here
Suggested opening bid $400,000
Discovered in 2006.
Arguably the most stunning of all flasher wrasses

Lionfish

Pterois your name here
Suggested opening bid $250,000
Herds prey with its pectoral fins before striking to swallow smaller fish whole.
Has poisonous spines

Pictichromis dotty back

Pictichromis your name here
Suggested opening bid $100,000
Known only from Cendrawasih Bay.
Perhaps the most beautiful of the dottybacks

The most remote and independent of all the Earth’s ecosystems are intimately connected with the rest of the environment, according to research that suggests that life has no hiding place from natural disasters and global warming.

Underwater “islands” around volcanic vents on the ocean floor have often been considered to be so isolated that they can act as “air-raid shelters” for life in the event of global catastrophes, such as asteroid strikes and climate change.

As these ecosystems derive their energy from hot volcanic emissions, and not from the Sun, scientists have suggested that they should be able to thrive independently of damaging events in the world above. Research led by Jon Copley, of the University of Southampton, however, has shown that these ecosystems are not as independent as was previously thought. His team has discovered that a species of shrimp living around vents in the Gulf of Mexico has seasonal breeding patterns that could only have evolved in response to the Sun.

Although the adult shrimp have no need of solar energy, their larvae migrate from one vent to the next, and on their journeys they rely on food sinking from sunlit waters. The breeding cycle is timed so that the larvae are released in the spring, to coincide with a bloom of microscopic plant life closer to the surface.

Dr Copley said: “I used to think these deep-sea communities would be safe from whatever havoc happens up here. But finding seasonality down there shows that life beneath the waves is far more connected than we realised.” This means that natural disasters could affect many organisms living around volcanic vents, by cutting off the food supply on which their young rely. Dr Copley will present his findings this week at the British Association Festival of Science in York.

— Mark Henderson

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