Critically Endangered
School shark
Galeorhinus galeus
The school shark is a houndshark of the family Triakidae, and the only living member of the genus Galeorhinus.
Appearance
The school shark is a small, shallow-bodied shark with an elongated snout. The second dorsal fin is about the same size as the anal fin and is set immediately above it. The terminal lobe of the caudal fin has a notch in it and is as long as the rest of the fin.
Mature sharks range from 135 to 175 cm (53 to 69 in) for males and 150 to 195 cm (59 to 77 in) for females.
Range and habitat
The school shark has a widespread distribution and is found mainly near the seabed around coasts in temperate waters, down to depths around 800 m (2,600 ft). It occurs in the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea, where it is uncommon and the Southwest Atlantic where it occurs between Patagonia and southern Brazil. It also occurs around the coast of Namibia and South Africa.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The school shark is a migratory species. Their diet was predominantly sardines, midshipmen, flatfish, rockfish, and squid.
Uniquely, school sharks appear to show a special preference for barracudas, with barracudas forming a significant component of the diet of reef-dwelling school sharks. A fossil specimen of the closely related species G. Cuvieri also contains the remains of a barracuda (Sphyraena bolcensis) in its stomach, suggesting that this predator-prey relationship between Galeorhinus and Sphyraena has lasted for at least 50 million years. The school shark gives birth to live young. Its eggs are fertilised internally and remain in the uterus where the developing foetus feeds on the large yolk sac.
In crisis
The IUCN has classified this species as critically endangered in its Red List of Threatened Species. The IUCN lists the school shark as critically endangered in its Red List of Threatened Species. Although it is widely distributed, it is threatened by overexploitation in many parts of its range, where it is targeted for its liver oil, flesh, and fins.
In June 2018 the New Zealand Department of Conservation classified the school shark as "Not Threatened" with the qualifiers "Conservation Dependent" and "Threatened Overseas" under the New Zealand Threat Classification System.
School 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 School shark, Wikidata item Q586662. 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.
