Arrowhead dogfish

How it lives

This is a little-known deep-water shark. It lives on the upper continental and insular slopes, on or near the seabed, at about 205 to 1,800 m. In the Azores it is most often found around 450 to 1,050 m. Females give birth to live young after the embryos feed only on yolk. Litters are 5 to 7 pups.

Where it goes

The arrowhead dogfish lives on or near the bottom of continental slopes. I found no tracking or migration studies.

We only draw a journey on the map when scientists have tracked it or clearly documented it. For this animal we have not found one yet.

Populations

Worldwide: Near Threatened (IUCN; FishBase dates the assessment to February 2024). It has been recorded in the northwest Atlantic off North Carolina, the eastern Atlantic from the Western Sahara to South Africa, the Arabian Sea and the Philippines. Deep-water sharks are taken as bycatch in some fisheries. In the Azores, a 2023 paper describes them as sharing late maturity and low reproductive rates, which leaves them open to even light fishing. FishBase scores this species as highly to very highly vulnerable to fishing pressure (70 out of 100). That 2023 paper still cites it as Data Deficient. I found no population count.