Habitat, biology, and fisheries
A common to abundant dogfish on the continental and insular shelves and upper and middle slopes of boreal to subtropical seas, at depths from the intertidal to possibly 1 446 m, with a tendency to occur close inshore in higher latitudes and in deep water closer to the equator; recorded depths in the area 8 to 619 m. Highly mobile and migratory, showing seasonal migrations along the Atlantic coast of North America. Ovoviviparous, number of young 1 to 32. Feeds primarily on bony fishes, both demersal and pelagic, but also eats small cartilaginous fishes, cephalopods, crustaceans, gastropods, bivalves, polychaete worms, sea cucumbers, jellyfish, and comb jellies.Caught in bottom trawls and with limited importance to fisheries in Area 31 compared to other areas of the North Atlantic where massive catches occur. Relatively small catches of dogfish (310 to 4 500 t per year, including this species) were reported by the USA to FAO during the
past decade.
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Distribution
In Area 31 this dogfish occurs off the Atlantic coast of the USA from North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, with an important wintering ground in deep water; occasionally caught off Cuba and the Bahamas. In the western Atlantic it ranges from Greenland and Labrador, Canada to Florida, USA, the Bahamas, and Cuba, also off Uruguay and Argentina. Widely distributed in temperate and subtropical parts of most oceans.
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