Angular Roughshark

• It is listed as Endangered globally and Critically Endangered in the Mediterranean: it is taken as bycatch by deep-sea trawling, has no commercial value, and virtually no individual returned to the sea survives.
• It has an enormous, very oil-rich liver that takes up a good part of the body cavity and allows it to stay suspended without swimming.
• Its ridges above the eyes widen into swellings covered in denticles, a feature shared by no other shark in its family.
• Its silhouette is unmistakable: a body triangular in cross-section, a strongly arched back and two tall dorsal fins tipped with a spine, which give it the look of a humpbacked pig.
• Its liver is enormous in proportion to its body and very rich in oil, giving it near-neutral buoyancy and letting it hold position near the bottom without swimming.
• It feeds mainly on bottom invertebrates, especially polychaetes and the eggs of other fish.
• Its decline comes above all from bycatch in deep-water trawling: it is not fished for its value but falls into nets aimed at other species.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - cartilaginous skeleton (chondrichthyan)

Habitat & environment

Slope bottoms of the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean, between 60 and 1,300 m

Size at birth

Less than 25 cm at birth

Sexual maturity

Both sexes at around 50 cm

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxynotus_centrina