The greeneye spurdog (''Squalus chloroculus'') is a species of dogfish described in 2007. It is a member of the

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

Squalidae Squalidae, more commonly known as dogfish, dog sharks, or spiny dogfish, are one of several families of sharks categorized under Squaliformes, making it the second largest order of sharks, numbering 119 species across 7 families. Having earned t ...

, found off the coast of southeastern

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. The length of the longest specimen measured is . It was considered conspecific with the

shortspine spurdog The shortspine spurdog (''Squalus mitsukurii'') is a dogfish, a member of the family Squalidae, found on continental shelves off Japan in temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to ...

Taxonomy

The widely-distributed

(''Squalus mitsukurii'') was found to comprise a number of distinct species; populations from southern Australian waters were described as ''Squalus chloroculus'' in 2007, the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

collected off Portland, Victoria in 1998. The species name is derived from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

''chloros'' "green" and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''oculus'' "eye".Last, P.R., White, W.T. and Motomura, H. 2007. Description of Squalus chloroculus sp. nov., a new spurdog from southern Australia, and the resurrection of S. montalbani Whitley. In: P.R Last, W.T. White and J.J. Pogonoski (eds) (eds), Descriptions of New Dogfishes of the genus Squalus (Squaloidea: Squalidae), pp: 55‒69.. CSIRO,, Australia.

Description

The greeneye spurdog is a robust dogfish with a fusiform body shape, bright green eyes, and overall grey colour. The underparts are paler: paler grey chin and throat to grey-white along the body and tail. The dorsal fins are pale grey with black margins. The pectoral and pelvic fins are grey with paler trailing edges and undersurfaces. The caudal fin is mostly grey with a dark patch over the notch.

Distribution and habitat

The species lives in waters off southern and eastern Australia from Eucla in Western Australia to Jervis Bay in New South Wales, on the upper and middle

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 margin ...

from depths of . The greeneye spurdog is one of four species identified as threatened with extinction by trawling in a 2021 report. The species is caught up in demersal trawling and automatic longline fishing on the upper continental slope by the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark fishery and the Great Australian Bight Trawl Fishery.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5033788 greeneye spurdog Marine fish of Southern Australia Marine fish of Tasmania greeneye spurdog greeneye spurdog greeneye spurdog