Welcome to "Sharks of the World"

L.J.V. Compagno

This is the fourth in the FAO series of worldwide annotated and illustrated catalogues of major groups of organisms that enter marine fisheries.

The present volume includes 344 shark species belonging to 8 orders and 31 families.

It provides a comprehensive and illustrated key to all orders and families of sharks, with a glossary of technical terms and measurements. 

Within each family are given individual accounts of species, which include drawings, scientific and vernacular names, information on habitat, biology and fisheries, and a distribution map; for most families there is also a key to genera. The work is fully indexed and there is ample reference to pertinent literature. 

This catalogue includes all the described species of living sharks and their synonyms, including species of considerable and major importance to fisheries as well as those of potential, limited, and no current use. 

The catalogue fills a need for a comprehensive review of sharks of the world in a form accessible to fisheries workers as well as shark biologists, people who encounter sharks during the course of work in the sea, and the interested public. 

In recent years there has been a marked increase in our knowledge of shark systematics; and formerly difficult, poorly known groups of species have yielded to revisionary work. However, with a single exception there has been no comprehensive work in the past 70 years listing all shark species and their synonyms.