Understanding the biogeography of organisms provides us with a better understanding of the evolutionary patterns and processes which have led to their present day distributions. Biogeographic information can be crucial for understanding how species react to changes in their environment. New Guinea has a very complicated geological history and is one of the most mobile zones in the earth’s crust. Combined with its location in the Coral Triangle, this has resulted in New Guinea having one of the most diverse and unique floral and faunal assemblages in the world. While there have been many studies on the biogeographic patterns of many invertebrate, terrestrial vertebrates and plants in New Guinea, there have been far fewer marine organism-focused studies and no detailed shark and ray specific studies. In this study, the biogeographic patterns of three shallow-water, reef associated elasmobranch species are considered. The epaulette sharks (genus Hemiscyllium) contains 9 species, with 7 restricted to the New Guinea region and the other two found only in northern Australia. While morphologically very similar, they can be readily separated based on their coloration. The bluespotted fantail rays (genus Taeniura) were previously considered to consist of a single Indo-West Pacific species, but taxonomic studies have revealed that the Pacific Island populations represent a distinct species. In New Guinea, both species occur but do not overlap in their distributions. Recent taxonomic studies on the maskrays (genus Neotrygon) suggest that their distribution in the New Guinea region is more complicated than it was previously considered to be. The results of this study highlight the importance of both detailed regional studies and biological collections in order to obtain detailed biogeographic information for various organisms.