| Kingdom | Phylum | Class | Order | Family |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANIMALIA | CHORDATA | CHONDRICHTHYES | LAMNIFORMES | ODONTASPIDIDAE |
| Scientific Name: | Odontaspis noronhai | |||||||||
| Species Authority: | (Maul, 1955) | |||||||||
Common Name/s:
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| Synonym/s: |
Carcharias noronhai Maul, 1955
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| Red List Category & Criteria: | Data Deficient ver 3.1 | |||
| Year Assessed: | 2005 | |||
| Assessor/s | Amorim, A.F., Arfelli, C.A. & Fagundes, L. | |||
| Evaluator/s: | Musick, J.A. & Fowler, S.L. (Shark Red List Authority) | |||
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Justification: The Bigeye Sand Tiger (Odontaspis noronhai) is a rare pelagic deepwater shark that is sparsely but widely distributed in tropical and warm-temperate waters, apparently an inhabitant of continental and insular slopes. It is so infrequently recorded that its biology and population status is unknown. Its life cycle and biology is likely to be similar to that of C. taurus, which has been found to be particularly vulnerable to fisheries, although Odontaspis noronhai matures at an even larger size. |
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| History: |
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| Range Description: |
This shark is very rarely recorded, but apparently with a wide but disjunct distribution in the Atlantic (centre of distribution possibly in Brazilian waters) and Pacific Oceans. Odontaspis noronhai (Maul 1955), was described from a single specimen from Madeira, caught in 1941. There were no further records, until nine specimens were reported from Brazilian waters (24ºS– 44ºW) in 1981. Two more specimens were also caught off Brazil from the same area in 1982 and 1984 and Sadowsky et al. (1984) provided the second published record of this species and confirmed its existence. Further records of single fish have been reported from the Gulf of Mexico (1984) and Madeira (1952) (Branstetter and McEachran 1986), Hawaii (Humphreys et al. 1989) and southern Brazil (31ºS–49ºW, in 1991) (Araujo and Teixeira 1993). The species was also seen another nine times from November 1982 to April 1985 at 23º–26ºS and again in 1989 (U.L. Gomes pers. comm.). A jaw of O. noronhai has been collected from the Indian Ocean or South China Sea (Sadowsky et al. 1984) and some teeth were also collected from bottom deposits in the central North Pacific, although not clearly identified as O. noronhai (Belyaev and Glikman 1970). |
| Countries: |
Native:
Brazil; Mexico; Portugal (Madeira); United States (Hawaiian Is.)
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| FAO Marine Fishing Areas: |
Native:
Atlantic – southwest; Atlantic – eastern central; Pacific – eastern central
Presence uncertain:
Indian Ocean – western
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| Population Trend: |
Unknown
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| Habitat and Ecology: | Very little information has been collected from the few specimens obtained. The maximum size reported was 367cm total length (TL) (male). A female of 321 cm TL was still immature. The reproduction of this species is presumably similar to that of the better-known laminids (oviphagous, see above). |
| Systems: | Marine |
| Major Threat(s): | Odontaspis noronhai is rarely captured by fishing. All catches of O. noronhai from Brazil were made by tuna longliners based in Santos, except the one from southern Brazil, caught by gillnet (Sadowsky et al. 1984, Araújo and Teixeira 1993, Amorim et al. 1998). Presumably it is taken occasionally by deepwater fisheries with line and net gear, including pelagic gillnets, purse-seines and deep-set longlines. It may live mostly below the depths normally fished by horizontal pelagic longlines and purse-seines and is possibly too large to be a regular bottom or pelagic trawl catch (Compagno 2001). |
| Conservation Actions: | None. |
| Citation: | Amorim, A.F., Arfelli, C.A. & Fagundes, L. 2005. Odontaspis noronhai. In: IUCN 2009. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2009.2. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 09 February 2010. |
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