Cody Stylian thought he saw a huge trout. But, gliding just below the surface, he moved differently than a fish.
The creature surfaced and the Victorian fisherman, startled, reached for his phone. A pink platypus swam in front of him.
Stylianou regularly fishes in a Gippsland spot he keeps secret to protect the rare animal. He thinks it might be the same man he saw years ago, only older and bigger.
“The beak and feet are definitely pink,” he says. “When he went a little further into the sunlit areas, he was easy to follow underwater, which is why I got so much video of him surfacing.”
In September, Stylianou was on his first trout fishing trip of the season when he saw a platypus he nicknamed “Pinky.” He watched it feed in the tannin-stained upper reaches of the river for about 15 minutes.
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“I saw other platypuses in the same river system, just normal colors,” he says. “Probably about five to eight of them over the years, as I recall. They usually just appear on the surface of the water and then disappear as soon as they see me.”
After Stilinau shared footage of the monotreme, online commentators suggested it could be a rare albino platypus. But biologist Geoff Williams says its color is simply lighter than one might expect.
“Platypuses vary greatly in colour,” says the director of the Australian Platypus Sanctuary. “And this one is at the extreme end of the light ones. We don't think it should be added to the list of albinos and leucists.”
Just as humans have different colors of hair or skin pigment, platypuses also come in different variations, Williams said. He said the platypus captured on video was “unusual but not exceptional.”
“What I've seen, and what every other leading platypus expert has looked at, he says, is that this is quite consistent with the expected color change,” he says.
“Let's just say it's cute, but it's not breakthrough… We think it's just one of the extreme options. Every once in a while you get a genetic abnormality that just throws things out, like it does with some people who have more freckles and so on.
“It’s a little unusual, but I’m afraid it doesn’t cause much concern.”
The platypus is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. There was also Victorian era population declinewhich makes them more vulnerable, Williams says.
“Platypuses were in significant decline until about the 1990s, when the full impact of European settlement on our waterways became apparent,” he says.
“We've disrupted the flow of virtually every river we have. We've cleared the natural vegetation along most of our waterways and, not surprisingly, that's put a lot of pressure on the platypus population.”
Replanting programs along waterways and consideration of environmental impacts near rivers have begun to encourage population return.
“We still have a way to go and we can't be complacent,” Williams says.
“But the good news for now is that much of the research work being done at this location suggests the numbers are coming back, particularly the number of sightings in some areas that are causing concern.”
