At night, aboard a traditional wooden fishing vessel, a column of green-white light shot into the black sea below. The fishers aboard were doing routine work: raising and lowering a wide lift net, checking the ropes that held it suspended and tending a series of lamps that draw small baitfish beneath the platform. But as the crew began to lift the net, something unusual surfaced in the glow: a pale, spotted shape drifting just above the mesh. It was a whale shark — an endangered species — but by far the smallest one they had ever seen in Saleh Bay, Indonesia. Video of the first baby whale shark discovered in Indonesia: At just 1.3 to 1.5 meters long, the animal fell squarely within the size class of a neonate, a baby only a few months old. Until now, every whale shark documented in Indonesia had been a juvenile at least twice that size. Globally, sightings of individuals under 1.5 meters are vanishingly rare — only 33 have ever been recorded in the scientific literature.…