Its family is, by most measures, the most threatened group of marine fishes on Earth.
Giant guitarfishes and wedgefishes have the misfortune of carrying the most valuable fins in the shark fin trade. They are large, slow-growing, shallow, coastal, and they produce few young, which is the exact combination that cannot absorb fishing pressure. Almost every species in the group is now Critically Endangered, and several have not been recorded anywhere in decades.
The declines are not gradual. Surveys along parts of the 🌊 Indian Ocean coast that once landed these animals routinely now find none at all, and the group has effectively vanished from large parts of its former range within a single human generation. The pattern repeats because the fishery is not selective: the animals are taken in trawls and gillnets set for everything else, and the fins are worth enough that nothing is released.
This species reaches three meters and is named for the blunt club-like tip of its snout. It lives on open sand in shallow water, which is where the nets are, and here it is a very rare animal that most divers will never see.
The genus. Glaucostegus Bonaparte 1846 - glaucus (bluish-green or gray) + stegus (to cover). ETYFish
The species. Glaucostegus thouin (Anonymous [Lacepède] 1798) - Honours French botanist André Thouin. ETYFish
- very large, to three meters, with a broad wedge-shaped snout
- blunt rounded tip to the snout, which is what the name refers to
- shark-like tail with two well-developed dorsal fins
- on open sand rather than reef
