Endangered
Starspotted smooth-hound
Mustelus manazo
The starspotted smooth-hound is a houndshark of the family Triakidae.
Appearance
Its dorsal side is gray or grayish brown, with irregular white spots scattered near their lateral lines, and its abdomen is white. The frontmost end of the anal fins is roughly at the midpoint of the second pair of dorsal fins. It is a medium-sized shark with irregular white spots across its body.
Sexually mature individuals typically have lengths between 62-72 cm. Largest known male has a total length of 96 cm while the largest female has a length of 118 cm.
Range and habitat
The star-spotted smooth-hound is mainly found around the coastal waters of the northwest Pacific Ocean, ranging from southern Russia in the north to Brunei in the south, but some are also found in the coastal waters of Kenya in Africa. The star-spotted smooth-hound mainly inhabits continental shelves of temperate waters, especially waters with sandy or muddy substrates. It is found in Northwestern Pacific as well as Kenyan water.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Most of its prey are crustaceans such as mantis shrimps, crabs, and shrimps. Some studies have pointed out that the stomach content weight of star-spotted smooth-hound in Tokyo Bay waters has a downward trend, that may be due to the decline in the benthic invertebrate populations on that they feed on.
For example, male sharks in waters around Taiwan can breed at the age of 1, while 6-year-old male sharks in the Aomori Bay may still be immature.
In crisis
Currently, due to overfishing, this species is on the edge of extinction. Currently, the population status of star-spotted smooth-hound is in crisis. The above factors have caused a serious decline in the population of star-spotted smooth-hound.
The IUCN 2020 report estimated that the population of star-spotted smooth-hound has declined by 50% to 79% in the past 33 years, and it is therefore rated as Endangered.
Starspotted smooth-hound 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 Starspotted smooth-hound, Wikidata item Q1870221. 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.
