The Pinocchio catshark (''Apristurus australis'') is a species of
catshark in the family
Scyliorhinidae found in
Australia and possibly
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...
. Its natural
habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and 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 ...
is the open seas. It belongs to a
genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...
of poorly known deep-water
shark
Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachi ...
s. Very little is known of its biology. Possibly a widely distributed deep-water
catshark found along the Australian
continental slope
A continental margin is the outer edge of continental crust abutting oceanic crust under coastal waters. It is one of the three major zones of the ocean floor, the other two being deep-ocean basins and mid-ocean ridges. The continental marg ...
at depths of 590 to 1,000 m, it consists of several distinct populations which may be separate species. Although part of the distribution includes heavily fished areas, particularly off southeastern
Australia, much of its range is in unfished areas. Given the taxonomic uncertainty of the separate populations, it is not possible to assess the
conservation status of this
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...
at this time. However, deep-water demersal trawl fisheries are expanding in the region, and the situation should be reassessed following taxonomic clarification.
References
pinocchio catshark
Marine fish of Southern Australia
Taxa named by Keiichi Sato (ichthyologist)
Taxa named by Kazuhiro Nakaya
Taxa named by Michikazu Yorozu
pinocchio catshark
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
{{shark-stub
ru:Apristurus brunneus