Critically Endangered
Longcomb sawfish
Pristis zijsron
Longcomb sawfish is a shark or ray in the family Pristidae (order Rhinopristiformes) — Pristis zijsron, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Its upperparts are greenish-brown to olive, while the underparts are whitish. It can be further separated from the two most similar species, the dwarf and smalltooth sawfish, by the considerably smaller maximum size of the former species, and the less greenish colour (when alive/recently dead) and essentially Atlantic distribution of the latter species. The longcomb sawfish, narrowsnout sawfish or green sawfish is a sawfish in the family Pristidae, found in tropical and subtropical waters of the Indo-West Pacific.
The longcomb sawfish is possibly the largest species of sawfish, reaching a total length of up to 7.3 m (24 ft), but rarely more than 6 m (20 ft) today.
Range and habitat
The longcomb sawfish is native to tropical and subtropical waters in the western and central Indo-Pacific. Historically its distribution covered almost 5,900,000 km2 (2,300,000 mi2) and it ranged from South Africa, north to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, east to the South China Sea, through Southeast Asia to Australia. In Australia, it ranged from Shark Bay, along the northern part of the country, and south to Jervis Bay on the eastern coast.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
It thrashes its rostrum from side-to-side to dislodge prey from the seabed and to stun groups of fish. Little is known of its life cycle, but it gives birth to live young and the young are 60–108 cm (24–43 in) long at birth.
In crisis
It has declined drastically and is now considered a critically endangered species. The longcomb sawfish has declined drastically and is listed by the IUCN as "Critically Endangered" in its Red List of Threatened Species. Fishing is the main threat, but it is also threatened by habitat loss.
The total population is believed to have declined by more than 80% over three generations. The subpopulations in Australia are among the few that remain viable, but even they have declined, and the species no longer occurs in New South Wales.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Longcomb sawfish 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 Longcomb sawfish, Wikidata item Q135918. 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.
