A fisherman thought he saw a huge trout. Then it surfaced with a pink bill.

A fisherman thought he saw a huge trout. Then it surfaced with a pink bill.

A fisherman thought he saw a huge trout. Then it surfaced with a pink bill. Cody Stylianou was on his first trout fishing trip of the season in September when something caught his eye in the water. It was moving differently than a fish would, skimming just below the surface in a way that seemed unusual. When the creature surfaced, Stylianou realized he was looking at something far rarer than any trout: a pink platypus.

The Victorian fisher, who regularly visits the secret Gippsland location he’s keeping private to protect the animal, quickly grabbed his phone and started recording. What followed was about 15 minutes of watching what he’s nicknamed “Pinky” feed in the tannin-stained river. “The bill and feet are super obviously pink,” he said. “When he did go a bit further into sunlit areas, he was easy to follow underwater, which is how I got so many videos of him surfacing.”

Stylianou has seen plenty of platypus in this river system over the years, estimating five to eight regular-colored individuals. But this one was different. He thinks it might be the same animal he spotted years ago, just older and bigger now. The pink coloration, however, is what made this sighting go viral when he shared the footage online.

Social media commenters immediately speculated that Stylianou had captured a rare albino platypus, a genetic anomaly that would have made the sighting truly extraordinary. But biologists who reviewed the footage offered a more measured assessment. Jeff Williams, director of the Australian Platypus Conservancy, explained that the pink platypus is unusual but not scientifically groundbreaking.

“Platypus do vary a lot in colour,” Williams said. “And this one’s at the extreme end of the light ones. It’s not one that we consider should be added to the list of albino and leucistic ones.” Just as humans have different hair colors or skin pigments, platypus come in variations. The pink coloring, while striking, falls within the range of natural diversity for the species.

Williams emphasized that the footage shows an “unusual but not exceptional” specimen. “What I’ve seen and what every other leading platypus person has looked at, it says, that it’s well within the sort of variation in colour that one would expect,” he said. “Let’s put it this way, it’s cute, but it’s not a breakthrough. Every so often, you will get a genetic anomaly that just throws up things, just as it does with some humans, who have more freckles and so on.”

The sighting comes at a time when platypus populations are showing signs of recovery after decades of decline. The species is listed as near-threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list, with Victorian populations particularly vulnerable. Williams explained that platypus numbers dropped significantly up until the 1990s due to the impacts of European settlement on waterways.

“We messed up pretty much the flow of every river we’ve got. We cleared native vegetation along most of our waterways, and, not surprisingly, that put a lot of pressure on the platypus population,” he said. Replanting programs and increased consideration of environmental impacts near rivers have helped populations begin to recover.

“We’ve still got a way to go, and we can’t be complacent,” Williams added. “But the good news at the moment is most of the survey work that’s being done around the place is suggesting numbers that are coming back, certainly the number of sightings in some places where there was concern.”

For Stylianou, the encounter was simply a memorable moment on a fishing trip, made extraordinary by the pink creature swimming before him. For scientists, it’s a reminder that platypus diversity includes more variation than many realize. And for everyone else, it’s proof that Australia’s weird and wonderful wildlife still has surprises to offer. A pink platypus, swimming in a secret creek, waiting for someone to notice.