Pacific Angelshark

Fascinating facts about the Pacific Angelshark

• A single Pacific angelshark can stay buried on the same spot for up to ten days, striking prey and then re-burying itself after each bite, before moving on only when the local fish learn to avoid it.
• Off Santa Catalina Island, nine tagged angelsharks used just 1.5 km² (0.6 mi²) of seafloor in a 13–25-hour period, yet a longer study showed the same sharks can wander as far as 75 km (47 mi) in three months, essentially circling the island.
• When it attacks, the shark thrusts its head upward at a 90° angle and completes the whole strike in under a tenth of a second, creating suction with its mouth and protecting its eyes by rolling them backward.
• Females give birth to an average of six pups each spring; newborns are about 25 cm (9.8 in) long, while adults can reach 1.5 m (4.9 ft) and weigh up to 27 kg (60 lb).
• A targeted gillnet fishery off Santa Barbara ran from 1976 to 1994, collapsing the local population, but protection measures have helped the Californian stocks recover, leaving the Mexican fisheries as the main unknown pressure on the species.

At a glance

About the Pacific Angelshark

The Pacific angelshark (Squatina californica) glides along sandy flats of the eastern Pacific with a flattened, ray-like silhouette, its wing-shaped pectoral and pelvic fins splayed like quiet wings. A pair of cone-shaped barbels crowns its snout, while angular pectoral fins and a dorsal surface of gray, brown, or reddish-brown mottled with dark spots give it a cryptic camouflage. Growing up to 1.5 m (4.9 ft) and weighing as much as 27 kg (60 lb), it buries itself in soft sediment near rocky reefs, kelp forests, or submarine canyons, often at depths of 3–45 m but occasionally as deep as 205 m. By day it remains motionless, concealed beneath a thin layer of sand, and at night it awakens to hunt, relying on keen eyesight to snap upward at unsuspecting fish or squid with a rapid, 90° thrust of its head and protrusible jaws, an attack completed in less than a tenth of a second. Its diet is a buffet of bony fishes, kelp bass, croakers, flatfishes, damselfishes, mackerels, sardines, and spawning squid that surge in winter and early spring. A surprising trait is its visual specialization: the shark’s eyes are tuned to the bioluminescent glow of disturbed plankton, allowing it to track prey in the dim night waters with remarkable precision.

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