Critically Endangered
Smoothback angelshark
Squatina oculata
The smoothback angelshark is an angelshark of the family Squatinidae found in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
Appearance
The shark is grey-brown with small, round black and white spots and a distinctive white neck spot. Eyespots with white edges may be present. The outer edges of the dorsal and caudal fins are white, those of the thoracic and pelvic fins dark.
The smoothback angelshark can reach a length of up to 1.6 metres.
Range and habitat
The smoothback angelshark is found on Africa's western coast down to Namibia, as well as in the Mediterranean. The smoothback angelshark is an angelshark of the family Squatinidae found in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
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
The smoothback angelshark is critically endangered. It is most threatened by the intensive fishing in coastal areas and continental shelves by drift nets, gillnets and longlines, that affects most of its range off the African coast.
Smoothback 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 Smoothback angelshark, Wikidata item Q1529880. 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.
