Author: (Rafinesque, 1810)
Field Marks:
No anal fin, two dorsal fin with large spines, bladelike unicuspidate teeth in upper and lower jaws, with lowers much larger than uppers, a long and narrow snout, fairly short first dorsal fin and high second dorsal, blocklike, very broad, sessile-crowned, wide-spaced, cuspidate lateral denticles, and rear tips of pectoral fins narrowly angular and strongly extended.
Diagnostic Features:
Snout rather long, narrowly parabolic, preoral snout greater than mouth width and about equal to distance from mouth to pectoral origins. Upper anterolateral teeth with mostly semioblique or oblique cusps. First dorsal fin moderately high and short, second dorsal moderately large, nearly as high as first, with base about 3/4 length of first dorsal base, and spine origin over rear tips or inner margins of pelvic fins; distance from first dorsal insertion to origin of second drosal spine about as long as tip of snout to pectoral insertions in adults and subadults; free rear tips of pectoral fins formed into narrow, angular and elongated lobes that reach well beyond the level of first dorsal spine, inner margins about equal to distance from second dorsal spine to caudal origin; caudal fin with a strongly notched posterior margin in adults and subadults. Lateral trunk denticles not overlapping each other, blocklike, with crowns sessile on bases and without pedicels, crowns broad and transversely rhomboidal in adults, with very short cusps on their posterior edges.
Geographical Distribution:
Western North Atlantic: Gulf of Mexico. Eastern Atlantic: western Mediterranean and Gibraltar to Senegal, Ivory Coast to Nigeria, Cameroon to Angola, northern Namibia. Indian Ocean: southern Mozambique, ? India. ? Western North Pacific: Taiwan Island.
Habitat and Biology:
A common deepwater dogfish of the outer continental shelves and upper slopes, on or near the bottom, in depths from 50 to 1400 m and commonest below 200 m. Ovoviviparous, number of young usually only one. Feeds on bony fishes and squid.
Size:
Maximum total length about 100 cm, males mature between about 81 and 94 cm, mature females from 75 to 89 cm, size at birth between 40 and 50 cm.
Interest to Fisheries:
Known fisheries primarily in the eastern Atlantic, where this species is taken with bottom trawls, line gear, fixed bottom nets and pelagic trawls. It is utilized dried salted for human consumption; probably also for fishmeal and liver oil. Its liver oil is potentially valuable for its high squalene content.
Remarks:
Centrophorus harrissoni may not be distinct- from this small, long-nosed species. C. uyato is difficult to distinguish from the larger C. granulosus when immature or subadult (see Cadenat and Blache, 1981 for a detailed account of this problem), but adults apparently can be separated by their considerably smaller size, longer and narrower snout, retention of a cusp on their blocklike lateral denticles, usually more oblique-cusped upper teeth, and often a darker mouth lining.
Type material:
Holotype: Not known. Type Locality: Sicily, Mediterranean Sea.