The white-bodied catshark (''Apristurus albisoma'') is a catshark of the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Pentanchidae, the deepwater catsharks.

Description

This shark is coloured whitish to light grey.

Distribution

This species is found in the western Pacific. The area of occupancy of this small

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "the depths". ...

endemic

shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch cartilaginous fish characterized by a ribless endoskeleton, dermal denticles, five to seven gill slits on each side, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the ...

was presumed very limited (less than 2,000 km²), being restricted to a narrow depth band on insular and seamount slopes near New Caledonia. However this species has been collected in waters of the north of New Zealand on the West Norfolk Ridge.

Conservation status

Although this species has been classified by the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the stat ...

as of

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

, there is a worry that this species may be taken as un-utilised bycatch by deepwater trawl fisheries and that, like other deepwater species, it may not be sufficiently fecund to withstand exploitation pressure in these fisheries. The New Zealand Department of Conservation has classified the white-bodied catshark as "Data deficient" under the

New Zealand Threat Classification System The New Zealand Threat Classification System is used by the Department of Conservation to assess conservation priorities of species in New Zealand. The system was developed because the IUCN Red List, a similar conservation status system, had s ...

References

white-bodied catshark Fish of New Caledonia Taxa named by Kazuhiro Nakaya Taxa named by Bernard Séret white-bodied catshark {{shark-stub