Greenland shark

Somniosus microcephalus

Four Hundred Twenty Seven Centimeters Shark of the Pacific Ocean

Greenland shark is known from North Atlantic from the USA and Canada to Greenland as a marine fish. It occurs in marine waters.

Class: Sharks and Rays
Order: Dogfish Sharks
Family: Somniosidae
Genus: Somniosus
Maximum length: 427 cm
Body shape: elongated
Distribution: North Atlantic from the USA and Canada to Greenland in the west and from Portugal to the Barents Sea and Eastern Siberian Sea. Genetic analyses caution that the geographic range of this species may be much narrower, ranging from Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, and Norway, with occasional records from Cuba, France and Spain (Canary Is.) (Yano et al. 2007, MacNeil et al. 2012, Walter et al. 2017, Simpson et al. 2018). Records from the western Atlantic, including records from the northern Gulf of Mexico and Canadian side off the Davis Strait exhibit evidence of introgressive hybridisation with Pacific Sleeper Shark ( Somniosus pacificus ) which has been recorded as far north as the Azores Islands (Portugal) (Walter et al. 2017).
Conservation status: VUVulnerable

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