Endangered
Blackspotted catshark
Halaelurus buergeri
Blackspotted catshark is a shark or ray in the family Scyliorhinidae (order Carcharhiniformes) — Halaelurus buergeri, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The blackspotted catshark has the appearance of a member of the catshark family, with a cylindrical and slender body, two dorsal fins of equal size, and a smaller anal fin. The body of the blackspotted catshark is thick-skinned and usually a light beige or dark grey color, with distinctive dark spots covering the entire body as well as the fins. Saddles on the side are not prominent, though darker in color compared to the rest of the body.
It can grow up to 49 cm in length.
Range and habitat
The blackspotted catshark is native to Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. Their range is confined to the Pacific Ocean as far south as Western Australia, where they are considered a common inshore catshark. It is found in the waters off the coasts of Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan between latitudes 39° N and 20° N, at the depths of between 80 and 100 m.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Leonard Compagno, a shark taxonomist, noted that females have been known to deposit between 6-12 egg cases.
In crisis
Blackspotted catshark 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 Blackspotted catshark, Wikidata item Q2719415. 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.
