Critically Endangered
Sharpnose guitarfish
Glaucostegus granulatus
Sharpnose guitarfish is a shark or ray in the family Glaucostegidae (order Rhinopristiformes) — Glaucostegus granulatus, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Its body is flattened and wedge-shaped, with a long, narrow truck and a pointed snout with oblique nostrils. The dorsal surface of the body is yellowish to brownish or greyish and has rough skin in small denticles. The dorsal fins are closely together, with a spacing of 1.3 to 1.6 times the length of the base of the dorsal fin, and the tail length is roughly 1 to 1.4 times the disc length.
Sharpnose guitarfish is a large ray species that can reach a total length of 2.3 metres (7 ft 7 in).
This species was first described by Georges Cuvier in 1829, and despite their appearance, they don't pose any threat to humans.
Range and habitat
The sharpnose guitarfish is endemic to the Indo-Pacific region. The populations are found near Australia, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Myanmar, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, and possibly China and Oman. Its natural habitats are open seas, coral reefs, and estuarine waters.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Also, elasmobranchs possess a lateral line that can detect hydrodynamic movements to spot prey or evade potential predators. Sharpnose guitarfish exhibit an ovoviviparous reproductive lifestyle that is the embryos are in the form of eggs that remain within the mother until they're ready to hatch.
In crisis
As of April 2022, the IUCN has classified the sharpnose guitarfish as critically endangered. The sharpnose guitarfish is classified as a critically endangered species. As a result of exploitation, the sharpnose guitarfish populations are facing drastic declines and some localized populations are disappearing entirely.
Unintentionally trawls, nets, and other forms of industrial fishing gear have caused the sharpnose population to not recover quickly from these fishing pressures. The finning practice where sharks and rays are solely captured for their fins remains a challenge for conservation strategies even though there are regulations banning these practices in many countries.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Sharpnose guitarfish 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 Sharpnose guitarfish, Wikidata item Q3318973. 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.
