| Kingdom | Phylum | Class | Order | Family |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANIMALIA | CHORDATA | CHONDRICHTHYES | CARCHARHINIFORMES | SPHYRNIDAE |
| Scientific Name: | Sphyrna lewini | |||
| Species Authority | (Griffith & Smith, 1834) | |||
Common Name/s:
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| Red List Category & Criteria: | Lower Risk/near threatened ver 2.3 |
| Year Assessed: | 2000 |
| Assessor/s | Kotas, J.E. |
| Evaluator/s: | Musick, J.A. & Fowler, S. (Shark Red List Authority) |
|
Justification: This large hammerhead is widely distributed and common in warm temperate and tropical seas, occurring from the shore and surface over continental and insular shelves to adjacent deep water. Pups occupy shallow coastal nursery grounds, often heavily exploited by inshore fisheries. This widely distributed species is extremely commonly taken in fisheries, both as a target species and as utilised bycatch (fins are highly valued). Lack of data on population trends makes it difficult to assess whether the high level of catches of this species at all life stages is having an effect on stocks, but some declines are reported. |
|
| Range Description: | Essentially circumglobal in coastal warm temperate and tropical seas (Compagno 1984). |
| Countries: |
Native:
Algeria; American Samoa; Angola; Anguilla; Antigua and Barbuda; Aruba; Australia; Bahamas; Bangladesh; Barbados; Belize; Benin; Bermuda; Brazil; Brunei Darussalam; Cambodia; Cayman Islands; China; Christmas Island; Cocos (Keeling) Islands; Colombia; Congo; Congo, The Democratic Republic of the; Cook Islands; Costa Rica; Cuba; Côte d'Ivoire; Djibouti; Dominica; Dominican Republic; Ecuador (Galápagos); Egypt; El Salvador; Equatorial Guinea; Eritrea; Fiji; France; French Guiana; French Polynesia; Gabon; Gambia; Ghana; Gibraltar; Grenada; Guadeloupe; Guatemala; Guinea; Guinea-Bissau; Guyana; Honduras; Hong Kong; India; Indonesia; Iran, Islamic Republic of; Israel; Italy; Jamaica; Japan; Jordan; Kenya; Kiribati; Liberia; Macao; Madagascar; Malaysia; Maldives; Martinique; Mauritania; Mauritius; Mexico; Micronesia, Federated States of; Monaco; Montserrat; Mozambique; Myanmar; Namibia; Netherlands Antilles (Curaçao); New Caledonia; Nicaragua; Northern Mariana Islands; Oman; Pakistan; Panama; Papua New Guinea; Philippines; Pitcairn; Portugal (Madeira); Puerto Rico; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Samoa; Sao Tomé and Principe; Saudi Arabia; Senegal; Seychelles; Sierra Leone; Singapore; Somalia; South Africa; Spain (Canary Is.); Sri Lanka; Sudan; Suriname; Taiwan, Province of China; Tanzania, United Republic of; Thailand; Togo; Trinidad and Tobago; Turks and Caicos Islands; Tuvalu; United States (Hawaiian Is.); Venezuela; Viet Nam; Virgin Islands, British; Virgin Islands, U.S.; Western Sahara; Yemen
|
| FAO Marine Fishing Areas: |
Native:
Atlantic – western central; Atlantic – southeast; Atlantic – eastern central; Atlantic – southwest; Atlantic – northwest; Indian Ocean – western; Indian Ocean – eastern; Pacific – western central; Pacific – eastern central; Pacific – northwest; Pacific – southeast
|
| Population Trend: |
Unknown
|
| Habitat and Ecology: | S. lewini is a coastal-pelagic, semi-oceanic, warm-temperate and tropical species. It occurs over continental and insular shelves and in the deeper water adjacent to them, often approaching close inshore and entering enclosed bays and estuaries. The species ranges from the intertidal and surface down to at least 275 m depth. This species is apparently highly mobile and in part migratory, and forms huge schools of small migrating individuals that move polewards in the summer in certain areas such as off Natal, South Africa. Elsewhere, as in the East China Sea, it may not migrate and is thought to form large resident populations. The scalloped hammerhead takes a wide variety of fish prey, but also invertebrates (especially cephalopods) (Compagno 1984). |
| Systems: | Marine |
| Major Threat(s): | This species is caught with pelagic longlines, fixed bottom longlines, fixed bottom nets, and even bottom and pelagic trawls. The meat is utilized fresh, fresh-frozen, dried salted and smoked for human consumption; the fins are used to prepare shark-fin soup base; the hides are prepared into leather; the oil used for vitamins; and carcasses for fishmeal (Compagno 1984). |
| Citation: | Kotas, J.E. 2000. Sphyrna lewini. In: IUCN 2008. 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 23 November 2008. |
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