Critically Endangered
Speckled smooth-hound
Mustelus mento
The speckled smooth-hound is a houndshark of the family Triakidae.
Appearance
The speckled smooth-hound is a robust shark with a moderately long, blunt snout, small eyes, short mouth and molar-like teeth without cusps. The trailing edge of the dorsal fins have small, pointed projections. The caudal peduncle is short and the lower lobe of the tail fin is narrow and slightly curved.
The maximum length is about 130 cm (51 in) with maturity being reached by males at about 70 cm (28 in) and females at about 88 cm (35 in).
Range and habitat
The speckled smooth-hound is found off the Pacific coast of South America, among them the Galapagos Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands. Its range extends from the Isla Lobos de Tierra in Peru to the southern tip of Chile. Reports of this fish occurring in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Argentina are thought to be erroneous, and are likely to refer to the narrownose smooth-hound (Mustelus schmitti), another shark that is speckled with white spots.
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
Speckled smooth-hound 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 Speckled smooth-hound, Wikidata item Q2399868. 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.
