Endangered
Pacific nurse shark
Ginglymostoma unami
The pacific nurse shark is a medium sized shark from the family Ginglymostomatidae.
Appearance
Their broad, round snouts, that are shorter than the interorbital distance, are characterized by a small inferior mouth and long barbels around their nose. Their eyes, gills, and spiracles sit on the dorsal side of their body, likely due to their benthic lifestyle. As for coloration, they appear in varying shades of brown with yellow undertones and a light belly, and juveniles have a spotted pattern along their dorsal region.
Ginglymostomotidae are considered to be medium sized sharks, ranging around 200 cm in length in adulthood, with the maximum size being cited as 280 cm long.
Description The pacific nurse shark was first described in 2015 based on a holotype caught near Puerto Angel in Mexico, as previously, the species had been considered the same as Ginglymostoma cirratum.
Range and habitat
G. Unami is endemic to the Tropical Eastern Pacific, from the Southern coast of Baja California, Mexico and the Gulf of California to Peru. The species is also known to be highly mobile, traveling up to 390 km from their home-range. The species is endemic to the Tropical Eastern Pacific, and is not to be confused with its sister species Ginglymostoma cirratum, that is restricted to the Atlantic Ocean.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Sharks and rays grow slowly and have few young. A fishery that treats them as bycatch can empty a coastal form.
In crisis
Even so, Pacific nurse sharks are considered endangered, and they are threatened by fishing practices like many other shark species. The pacific nurse shark has most recently been assessed in 2019 and is currently labeled as endangered under the IUCN red list of endangered species. This is due to continuing declining populations, human impacts through fisheries, and habitat destruction.
Fisheries pose a particular concern for chondrichthyans in many countries within the species’ distribution, and G. Unami has been known to be caught as bycatch or get fatally tangled in nets. In Peru, for example, elasmobranch products are regularly traded within the country, and although there are no known commercial uses of Pacific nurse sharks, fisheries can lack proper identification on bycatch, leading to the exploitation of many shark species.
Pacific nurse 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 Pacific nurse shark, Wikidata item Q19813102. 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.
