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Spiny Dogfish

Spiny dogfish like to stay with the pack! Unlike many other sharks, they will often travel in large schools of hundreds to thousands of sharks.

 

Spiny dogfish have slender, grayish-brown bodies with a pale underside, rarely growing over 1 meter (3.25 feet) long. A small but resilient species, they are found in temperate and boral waters worldwide. Due to their small size, they can be targeted as prey for larger animals like larger fish, seals, orcas, and even larger spiny dogfish. Because of this, these sharks have a unique defense strategy — sharp spines on each dorsal fin that the dogfish can use to defend itself.  

These opportunistic predators feed on a variety of prey, including fish, squid, and crabs. It is thought that they might go without food for much of the winter months, when they live in deeper waters, as they are often very thin upon returning to coastal waters in early spring.  

Spiny dogfish may live to be over 60 years old.

 

 

A variety of human-caused threats, combined with their slow reproductive rate, have led to the spiny dogfish being considered globally vulnerable to extinction. 

Overfishing 

Spiny dogfish may be targeted and caught accidentally in artisanal, industrial, and recreational fisheries. Fishing pressure on the species varies around the world but is known to be a major threat as this species is very vulnerable to overfishing. 

Habitat loss 

Pollution, coastal development, and bottom trawling can all degrade or destroy important habitats that these sharks rely on.  

 

 

Protecting spiny dogfish requires sustainable fisheries management and conservation efforts. Oceana works globally to mitigate the effects of overfishing and increase the number of fisheries with management plans and catch limits. We also campaign to protect habitat from highly destructive fishing practices, including bottom trawling — where huge nets are dragged for miles along the seafloor, bulldozing everything in their path. You can learn more about our work to stop overfishing here. 

 

 

 

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