Pacific Angelshark

Squatina californica

A flattened, bottom-hugging shark that reads as a ray at first glance — until you notice the five gill slits opening on the sides of the head rather than underneath, and pectoral fins that stay separate from the skull instead of fusing to it. Squatina californica grows to about 1.5 m, is brown to grey above with scattered dark flecks, and carries a pair of cone-shaped barbels above a very wide mouth set right at the front of the snout. It lives over soft sand and mud close to shore, almost always within reach of a rocky reef, kelp bed or submarine canyon, and off California is commonest between roughly 3 and 45 m, though it has been recorded as deep as 205 m. The range runs from southeastern Alaska down through Baja California and into the Gulf of California; a southern population from Ecuador to Chile may yet prove to be a different species. It feeds by ambush, choosing a promising patch of sediment and holding it for several days, lying buried by day and striking upward with protrusible jaws as fish or squid pass overhead. Reproduction is ovoviviparous — the eggs hatch inside the mother and the young live off a yolk sac until birth — and females bear about six pups each spring. A resting angelshark tolerates a slow approach, but a provoked one bites hard enough to cause a nasty wound, so keep hands and fins clear. A targeted gillnet fishery off Santa Barbara ran from 1976 to 1994 and nearly collapsed the local stock; the Californian population is now largely protected and recovering, and the IUCN lists the species as Near Threatened.