|Scientific Name:||Etmopterus spinax|
|Species Authority:||(Linnaeus, 1758)|
Squalus spinax Linnaeus, 1758
|Red List Category & Criteria:||Least Concern ver 3.1|
|Assessor(s):||Coelho, R. Blasdale, T., Mancusi, C., Serena, F., Guallart, J., Ungaro, N., Litvinov, F., Crozier, P. & Stenberg, C.|
|Reviewer(s):||Cavanagh, R.D., Valenti, S.V., Stevens, J.D. & Fowler, S.L. (Shark Red List Authority)|
A common lantern shark occurring in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea on outer continental shelves and upper slopes at depths of 70–2,000 m, and most abundant at 200–500 m. A non-commercial species, all specimens captured as bycatch by commercial fishing vessels are discarded thus limiting the data available. Data from the Mediterranean Sea, Eastern Central and South Atlantic indicate that the species is still relatively commonly caught in scientific trawl surveys and there is no evidence that the population has declined there. A recently introduced ban on bottom trawling below 1,000 m depth in the Mediterranean Sea will afford it protection there. Deepwater fisheries also operate off the coast of western Africa, but these are relatively limited at this time. However, deepwater fisheries are intense in the Northeast Atlantic and scientific trawl surveys indicate that catch rates of this species declined by approaching 20% between the 1970s and 1998–2004. This species shows size structure segregation with depth. The deeper-occurring larger mature female sharks are probably more affected by the commercial deepwater fisheries operating in the Northeast Atlantic than the immature stages that are found in shallower waters. An assessment of Near Threatened is warranted in the Northeast Atlantic, given the apparent decline and continued, intense deepwater fishing pressure. Elsewhere and globally, the species is assessed as Least Concern because there is no evidence for population decline throughout the rest of its range and there are areas of refuge from fishing pressure. Continued monitoring is required to ensure that this species is not detrimentally affected by expanding deepwater fisheries in the future, particularly in the Eastern Central and Southeast Atlantic.
|Range Description:||Mediterranean Sea: found in the Western Mediterranean (Spain, France, Italy, Albania, Malta, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco). |
Northeast, eastern central and southeast Atlantic: Iceland and Norway south to Senegal, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire to Nigeria, Cameroon to Gabon, Azores and Cape Verde Islands (Compagno in prep.).
Native:Algeria; Cameroon; Cape Verde; Côte d'Ivoire; France; Gabon; Iceland; Italy; Libya; Malta; Morocco; Nigeria; Norway; Portugal (Azores, Madeira, Portugal (mainland)); Senegal; Sierra Leone; Spain; Tunisia; United Kingdom
|FAO Marine Fishing Areas:|
Atlantic – northeast; Atlantic – southeast; Atlantic – eastern central; Mediterranean and Black Sea
|Range Map:||Click here to open the map viewer and explore range.|
Data collected from 1985–2002 by the Italian national GRUND project (Gruppo Nazionale Risorse Demersali) and from 1994–2002 by the MEDITS project (Mediterranean International Trawl Survey) (Relini 1998, Bertrand et al. 2000) provided information on the abundance and bathymetric distribution of Etmopterus spinax. Analysis of trends in Biomass Index (BI kg per km²) of E. spinax from 1985–2002 indicated stable populations in the northern Tyrrhenian Sea (Relini et al. 2000, Cecchi et al. 2004). Etmopterus spinax was present at both high frequency (19% of the hauls) and high abundance (between 1 and 10 kg per km²) in the Mediterranean, with a standing stock biomass of 4% (2,248 t). The species was found to have an especially high presence in the western-central part of the Mediterranean basin (Morocco, Spain, France, Tyrrhenian, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily coasts) (Baino et al. 2001). Data collected in the Gulf of Valencia (Spain) during 1988–1989 from a bottom trawl fishery for Red Shrimp Aristeus antennatus revealed the presence of E. spinax in 87.5% of trawls carried out between 450 and 675 m depth, with a mean