Critically Endangered
Sawback angelshark
Squatina aculeata
Sawback angelshark is a shark or ray in the family Squatinidae (order Squatiniformes) — Squatina aculeata, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The colour of the angelshark is light brown mottled with dark brown, with white sports arranged on the head and some of the body. Obtains dark blotches on head, back, the fin bases and tail.
Has concave between eye, eye spiracle distance <1.5 x eye length.
Range and habitat
The range of the sawback angelshark continues to decrease as their population declines. Its presence is unknown in Algeria, Sardinia, Malta, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, southern Cyprus, Crete, and Western Mainland Greece. Usually found on muddy bottoms. 30–500 m (98–1,640 ft) down.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
As with other angelsharks, the sawback angelshark is a bottom-dweller that tries to camouflage at the bottom of the ocean in order to ambush and capture its prey. Sawback angelsharks are ambush predators, meaning they lie on the ocean floor and wait for their prey to pass by.
Sawback angelshark reproduction gives birth to live young.
In crisis
Sawback angelshark 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 Sawback angelshark, Wikidata item Q28802. 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.
