Small-spotted catshark

A small, slender shark with a rounded snout, cat-like slit eyes and two dorsal fins set well back towards the tail. The back and sides are sandy fawn to pale brown, covered in dense small dark brown spots, and the belly is cream. A useful identification point is at the nose: the flaps of skin in front of the nostrils are fused into a single broad lobe that reaches all the way down to the mouth. Most are 40 to 60 cm long; the species reaches about 80 cm to a metre. The skin is like fine sandpaper and the body feels surprisingly firm.

It is a bottom-dweller that spends the day resting on sand, gravel and muddy detritic ground, often tucked against a rock or half under a ledge, and hunts at night for worms, small crabs, shrimps and molluscs. Females lay tough, translucent egg cases with long curling tendrils that anchor them to seaweed, sea fans and sponges; the pup develops inside for months before wriggling out.

Around Malta this is the shark that turns up most often in fishing nets and at the Valletta and Marsaxlokk fish markets, but divers see it less often, because it prefers deeper, softer bottoms than most recreational dives reach. Your best chance is a sandy or silty slope below about 25 m, or a night dive on open sand. Sharklab-Malta has been recovering egg cases from dead females landed at the market and releasing the hatched pups back into Maltese waters.