Knife-tooth Dogfish

About the Knife-tooth Dogfish

The Scymnodon Ringens, also known as the Knife-tooth shark, is a harmless sleeper shark of the Somniosidae family.

A rare species, black in colour, small dorsal fin spines, and short snout. It has a small lanceolate tooth without cusplets in the upper jaw and huge high knife-cusped cutting teeth in lower jaw; mouth very wide and abruptly arched. Its maximum size is reported to be 110 m. it is probably ovoviviparous. It is usually used dried salted for human consumption.

Deepwater shark found at depths of 200 – 1,600 m in the eastern Atlantic from Scotland to Portugal and off Mauritania to Senegal.

The species is taken in bottom trawls, with line gear, and with fixed bottom nets. It is among a wide group of demersal squaloids taken as bycatch in the Spanish deepwater trawl fishery for black hake off Mauritania.

The Knifetooth shark is not included in the list of species covered by the European Union Total Allowable Catch for deepwater sharks, thus it is not covered by fisheries measures.

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