Endangered
Longfin mako shark
Isurus paucus
Longfin mako shark is a shark or ray in the family Lamnidae (order Lamniformes) — Isurus paucus, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The longfin mako is the larger of the two mako and the second-largest species in its family (after the great white), reaching upwards of 2.5 m (8.2 ft) in length and weighing over 70 kg (150 lb). Females grow larger than males. Large specimens can scale over 200 kg (440 lb). This species has a slim, fusiform shape with a long, pointed snout and large eyes that lack nictitating membranes (protective third eyelids).
Range and habitat
Widely scattered records suggest that the longfin mako shark has a worldwide distribution in tropical and warm-temperate oceans. The extent of its range is difficult to determine due to confusion with the shortfin mako. In the Atlantic Ocean, it is known from the Gulf Stream off the East Coast of the United States, the Caribbean, and southern Brazil in the west, and from the Iberian Peninsula to Ghana in the east, possibly among them the Mediterranean Sea and Cape Verde. In the Indian Ocean, it has been reported from the Mozambique Channel.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Its diet consists mainly of small, schooling bony fishes and squids. Longfin mako sharks are predators that feed on small schooling bony fishes and cephalopods.
In crisis
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed this species as endangered due to its rarity, low reproductive rate, and continuing bycatch mortality. In 2019, alongside the shortfin mako, the IUCN listed the longfin mako as "Endangered".
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Longfin mako shark 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 Longfin mako shark, Wikidata item Q207630. 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.
