Spotted Gully Shark

About the Spotted Gully Shark

Widely known by its former common name the Sharptooth Houndsharks, the  Spotted Gully Shark can be found off the coasts of southern Angola to South Africa. They favour sandy areas near rocky reefs and gullies. They swim and stay close to the bottom.  

Biology and Behaviour:

Spotted Gully Shark  can reach a length of 170 cm (66.9 in) and has large, round fins. Its pectoral fins are broad and sickle-shaped in adults. They have a blunt snout and long furrows around its mouth. Their teeth are small and tightly packed to form a pavement-like surface. Its teeth allow it to grasp slippery prey, while their broad bases allow it to crush hard-shelled prey like crabs.

They are grey or bronze above with a small amount of black spotting and five pairs of gill slits.

They hunt mainly at night and feed on crustaceans, bony fishes and cephalopods that also frequent the bottom. Sometimes, they will pursue a prey right onto the shore.

The Spotted Gully Shark is a highly active shark, but sometimes it can be found resting inside rock crevices.  

During the summer, Sharptooth sharks form groups in shallow water which may be related to reproduction because of the number of pregnant females.

Reproduction and Lifespan

Spotted Gully Sharks are ovoviviparous, meaning it produces young by means of eggs that hatch inside the mother’s body. The developing babies get their food from the egg yolk, not from the mother’s body, and are then born alive.. Females typically give birth between six to 12 pups between late May and August after a gestation period of 20 months. Females reproduce every two or three years. Larger female Sharptooth Houndsharks tend to have larger litters. The length at birth for a pup is about 30 to 32 cm (11.8 to 12.6 in) or sometimes 42 to 44 cm (16.5 to 17.3 in).

Sharptooth sharks grow slow. Males mature at 120 to 140 cm (47.2 to 55.1 in) long at 11 to 13 years of age, while females mature at 130 to 150 cm (51.2 to 59.1 in) long at 15 to 16 years of age. The maximum lifespan is 25 years.

Conservation and Tourism

Because of its small distribution range and its low growth and reproductive rates, they are vulnerable to overfishing.

It is caught extensively in recreational line fisheries and occasionally as a minor bycatch species in beach seine, longline, and trawl fisheries. Recreational fishers typically release this species. Catches of the Spotted Gully Shark in the commercial and recreational line fisheries in False Bay, South Africa peaked in 1990 and declined thereafter. Trend analysis of 21 years of catch-per-unit-effort data from 1996–2017 from the De Hoop Marine Protected Area (MPA), South Africa indicate an increase in population over the past three generation lengths (60 years). Commercial fishing for Spotted Gully Shark is prohibited in South Africa with minimal bycatch of this species and recreational fishing permitted but regulated. Hence, this data from the MPA may approximate the trends of the species in the region. There are currently no data available from other areas, but given an estimated increase in South Africa over the past three generations (60 years), the typical release of this species by recreational fishers, likely low post-release mortality, and mostly low fishing pressure elsewhere, it is suspected that the population trend is stable over the past three generation lengths (60 years) and is not suspected to be close to reaching the population decline threshold. Therefore, the Spotted Gully Shark is assessed as Least Concern.

Effort in South African shore line fisheries has decreased as a result of a 2002 South African ban on all-terrain vehicles on beaches. Parts of Namibia are remote and offer refuge from fishing pressure (Belhabib et al. 2015). Since 2002, artisanal and recreational fishing pressure in a few parts of southern Angola has increased while other areas remain unfished (Beckensteiner et al. 2016).

The meat from the Spotted Gully Shark is sometimes dried and sold locally as shark ‘biltong’ or jerky, or exported fresh or frozen to Europe or Taiwan (Da Silva and Bürgener 2007, Compagno 2009). Since prohibition on commercial catch, this species is often deliberately mislabeled so that it can be marketed for its meat (C. Da Silva, unpubl. data, 2018).

They can be seen at some aquariums, but there are no specific conservation methods currently in place. Sea Fisheries Research Institute has a proposal under consideration to decommercialize these sharks and protect it from expanding commercial export fisheries for small sharks. Although they can still be caught for a recreational sport.  

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Spotted Gully Shark Gallery