Small black dogfish
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Little black dogfish ( Etmopterus spinax ) |
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| Etmopterus spinax | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The little black dogfish or velvet-bellied shark ( Etmopterus spinax ) is a species of shark from the lantern shark family (Etmopteridae). The distribution area of this species includes parts of the East Atlantic and extends from Iceland and the coast of Norway and the North Sea over the rest of the Atlantic coast of Europe to Cameroon . The lesser black dogfish also occurs in the western Mediterranean , near the Azores and Cape Verde as well as - isolated from the rest of the distribution area - on the Atlantic coast of South Africa . It is quite common in the northern North Sea.
Appearance and characteristics
The little black dogfish is a small shark with a body length of about 45 centimeters with a maximum length of 60 centimeters. It becomes sexually mature with a length of 33 to 36 centimeters. It has an elongated body typical of lantern sharks with a broad head that is flattened on the top. The mouth and gill slits are black on the inside. The teeth in the upper jaw have four to seven points. The body color is dark brown with a darker, almost black underside. The pupil and iris are green. On the belly side it has the tiny luminous organs typical of lantern sharks , which produce a greenish shimmer in living animals.
One anal fin is missing, the two dorsal fins are preceded by the spines typical of the order. The first dorsal fin begins far behind the pectoral fins. It is smaller and flatter than the second and has a small spine, while the spine of the second dorsal fin is strong and as high as the fin. Like all species in the family, the animals have five gill slits and a spray hole behind the eye.
Way of life
The lesser black dogfish lives close to the ground on the continental shelf and above the continental slopes at depths of 200 to 500 meters, up to a maximum depth of 2490 meters, and is quite common. It sometimes lives in schools and feeds on smaller fish, cephalopods and crustaceans. Little data is available about his way of life. Like other species of order, it is viviparous ( ovoviviparous ). 6 to 20 young sharks are born per litter, which then have a length of 12 to 14 cm.
Danger
Etmopterus spinax is listed as not endangered on the IUCN Red List . It is irrelevant as a food fish and is therefore not fished specifically.
supporting documents
- ↑ Alessandro de Maddalena, Harald Bänsch: Sharks in the Mediterranean , Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH, Stuttgart 2005; Pp. 106-108. ISBN 3-440-10458-3
- ↑ Etmopterus spinax in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2008. Posted by: Coelho, R. Blasdale, T., Mancusi, C., Serena, F., Guallart, J. Ungaro, N., Litvinov, F., Crozier, P. & Stenberg, C., 2008. Retrieved July 5, 2011.
Web links
- Small black dogfish on Fishbase.org (English)
literature
- Bent J. Muus, Jørgen G. Nielsen: The marine fish of Europe in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Atlantic. Kosmos, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-440-07804-3 .
- Kurt Fiedler: Textbook of Special Zoology, Volume II, Part 2: Fish . Gustav Fischer Verlag Jena, 1991, ISBN 3-334-00339-6