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Lesser-spotted catshark

Scyliorhinus canicula

Scyliorhinus canicula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Scyliorhinidae WoRMS 105814

Reference photos

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A slender greyish-brown shark speckled with numerous small dark spots, both dorsal fins set far back towards the tail. Nocturnal: by day it rests on the seabed or hides in caves and crevices.

Depth

10-780 m, usually 80-100 m; mainly between 10 and 100 m in the north-east Atlantic

Size

Up to about 75 cm, commonly around 60 cm; a 100 cm record may be a misidentification of a close relative

Habitat

Shallow sublittoral and continental shelf, over sand, mud, gravel, coralline or algal bottoms, and also rocky ground

Behaviour

Nocturnal: by day males rest on the seabed and females hide in shallow caves and crevices; detects the weak electric fields of prey

Diet

I eat

  • Crustaceans, including krill, true crabs and hermit crabs, plus shrimps taken close to the seabed
  • Molluscs and small cephalopods picked off the bottom
  • Polychaete worms and small bony fish, chiefly bottom-living and demersal species

Eats me

Where you'd find it

Found all around Britain and Ireland, so you have a chance of seeing it anywhere on the coast.

ChannelCeltic SeaNorth SeaIrish SeaW of IrelandW of Scotland
Often seenWhere PEBL filmsBased on marine survey records (OBIS). Blank seas can mean nobody has looked there, not that the animal is absent.

Sources

Open-access references behind this page. Every statement on this page was read out of one of them; anything that could not be traced to a source was taken off the page rather than left standing. Each link was checked on the date shown, and confirmed then to be about this species.

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