Endangered
Blacknose shark
Carcharhinus acronotus
Blacknose shark is a shark or ray in the family Carcharhinidae (order Carcharhiniformes) — Carcharhinus acronotus, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The blacknose shark has a slender, streamlined body with a long, rounded snout and large eyes. The five pairs of gill slits are short, measuring less a third the length of the first dorsal fin base. The second dorsal fin is relatively large, though still less than half the height of the first.
Blacknose sharks are typically 1.3–1.4 m (4.3–4.6 ft) long and 10 kg (22 lb) in weight.
Range and habitat
The blacknose shark inhabits the continental and insular shelves off the eastern coast of the Americas, as far north as North Carolina and as far south as southern Uruguay, among them the Bahamas, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea. Blacknose sharks in the South Atlantic Bight (off the Atlantic coast of the southern United States) migrate northward in the summer and southward (or possibly offshore) in the winter. A similar migration occurs for sharks in the Gulf of Mexico. The blacknose shark is a requiem shark, belonging to the family Carcharhinidae, common in the tropical and subtropical waters of the western Atlantic Ocean.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Blacknose sharks feed primarily on small bony fishes and cephalopods, and in turn fall prey to larger sharks.
In crisis
Its common name comes from a characteristic black blotch on the tip of its snout, though this may be indistinct in older individuals. This species is not known to attack humans, though it has been documented performing a threat display towards divers. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the populations of the blacknose shark off the United States are being overfished, and proposed new conservation measures.
Blacknose shark is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Blacknose shark, Wikidata item Q1419686. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
