Garrick's catshark (''Apristurus garricki'') is a species of

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 ...

in the family

Pentanchidae Pentanchidae, the deepwater catsharks, is a family of sharks belonging to the order Carcharhiniformes Carcharhiniformes ( from Classical Greek ' (karcharos) 'sharp/jagged' and ' (rhinos) 'nose', plus Latin ''forme'' 'shape'), commonly known a ...

, the deepwater catsharks. This species is found in the waters of

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. Its natural

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

is the open seas. The new deep-water catshark, ''Apristurus garricki'', is described from the waters of northern New Zealand. It is named in honour of

Jack Garrick John Andrew Frank Garrick (24 March 1928 – 30 August 2018) was a New Zealand ichthyologist. Career Garrick specialised in elasmobranchs and published many books and articles about shark and ray biology. In 1982, he published a thorough taxonom ...

Conservation status

The

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological ...

classifies the Garrick's catshark as being 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 ...

. The New Zealand

Department of Conservation Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

has classified the Garrick's 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

Garrick's catshark Endemic marine fish of New Zealand Taxa named by Keiichi Sato (ichthyologist) Taxa named by Andrew L. Stewart Taxa named by Kazuhiro Nakaya Garrick's catshark {{shark-stub