Common smooth-hound

How it lives

A bottom-dwelling shark of continental shelves, usually at 5 to 50 m, recorded from 5 m down to about 625 m. Females give birth to live young that are nourished by a yolk-sac placenta. A litter is about 4 to 17 pups, each about 39 cm (15 in) long. It can live up to about 24 years. In the Gulf of Gabes, smooth-hounds caught on longlines were mostly mature adults.

Where it goes

Smooth-hounds swim mostly close to the seabed and sometimes up in the water column. The sources I opened do not describe set migration routes. Save Our Seas notes that sharks and rays of the Gulf of Gabes use shallow waters in spring and summer, which is also when fishing there is heavy.

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

Endangered on the IUCN Red List (2020). In Tunisia the Gulf of Gabes supplies more than 60 percent of the shark and ray landings. Smooth-hounds there are caught both by accident and by a gillnet aimed at them in summer, and catch rates have clearly fallen. A study of 162 grouper longline sets in 2016 and 2017 found sharks and rays in 85.8 percent of sets, with the common smooth-hound among the main sharks. The authors rated coastal live-bearing sharks as highly vulnerable to this fishery. Gulf studies also list a second species, the blackspotted smooth-hound (Mustelus punctulatus, rated Vulnerable), so a record of "smooth-hound" there may be either one.