Critically Endangered
Winghead shark
Eusphyra blochii
Winghead shark is a shark or ray in the family Sphyrnidae (order Carcharhiniformes) — Eusphyra blochii, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The second dorsal fin is much smaller and originates over the caudal third of the anal fin base. The anal fin is about half again as long as the second dorsal fin. A lengthwise groove is on the caudal peduncle at the dorsal origin of the caudal fin.
The width of the cephalofoil is equal to 40–50% of the shark's total length. Reaching a length of 1.9 m (6.2 ft), this small brown to gray shark has a slender body with a tall, sickle-shaped first dorsal fin.
Range and habitat
The winghead shark is found in the tropical central and western Indo-Pacific, from the Persian Gulf eastward across South and Southeast Asia to New Guinea and northern Queensland. Its range extends as far north as Taiwan and as far south as the Montebello Islands off Western Australia. This species inhabits shallow waters close to shore and has been known to enter estuaries.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Finally, the cephalofoil may increase the shark's ability to detect the electric fields and movements of its prey, by providing a larger surface area for its electroreceptive ampullae of Lorenzini and mechanoreceptive lateral line. Its diet consists mainly of small bony fishes, followed by crustaceans and cephalopods.
In crisis
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed it as endangered in 2016, as it is thought to have declined in some parts of its range due to overfishing.
Winghead shark is Critically 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 Winghead shark, Wikidata item Q890336. 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.
