The Snaggletooth Shark (Hemipristis elongata) is a medium-sized (to 256 cm total length) coastal shark that occurs in the Indo-West Pacific, from South Africa to China. It is demersal in inshore waters from the surface to depths of 132 m and it appears to grow and mature rapidly. The species is subject to intense and mostly unregulated fishing effort throughout its geographic and depth range, except in Australia. It is targeted and taken as bycatch in industrial and artisanal fisheries with multiple fishing gears including gillnet, longline, and trawl, and retained for its meat. Despite its possible rapid early growth and maturity, catches are low and the Snaggletooth Shark is reported as rare and uncommon across its range. While there is limited information available on the species, its large size, relative rarity, and the presence of intensive and mostly unregulated fisheries mean that, like many large carcharhinids, it will have undergone significant declines. Fishing pressure has continued to increase across much of its range and the species no longer occurs in some areas and continues to decline in others. Based on a precautionary approach, it is inferred that the Snaggletooth Shark has undergone a population reduction of 50–79% over the past three generation lengths (27 years) due to actual levels of exploitation, and it is assessed as Endangered A2d.

The Snaggletooth Shark occurs across the Indo-West Pacific, from South Africa north to the Red Sea, east to Papua New Guinea and Australia, and north to southern China (White et al. 2006, Last et al. 2010, Jaiteh and Momigliano 2015, Arunrugstichai et al. 2018, Habib and Islam 2020, Psomadakis et al. 2020, Ebert et al. 2021, Bennett et al. 2023; J. Neville pers. comm. 2023). Since the previous assessment (White and Simpfendorfer 2016), the distribution map has been refined to map this species to its known bathymetric range.

There are no data available on the global population size, trend, or structure of the Snaggletooth Shark, though it is reported as rare throughout its range (White et al. 2017, IUCN SSG 2018). The species is uncommon in South Africa and in the Western Indian Ocean (IUCN SSG 2018). In the Arabian Seas and adjacent waters, the species is rare and accounts for small amounts of shark landings, including 0.4% of shark landings by number in the United Arab Emirates (Jabado et al. 2015), <0.5% of elasmobranch landings in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar (Moore et al. 2012, Moore and Pierce 2013), and is uncommonly caught in Iran (Valinassab 2016). It made up 0.5–0.8% of shark landings by number in Sudan (I. Elhassan pers. comm. 2017), and in Saudi Arabia it represented <1% of the elasmobranch landings by number (Spaet and Berumen 2015). It is uncommonly caught in Sri Lanka (Fernando et al. 2019, Peiris et al. 2021), India (Akhilesh et al. 2011), Oman (Henderson and Reeve 2014), Pakistan (Moazzam and Osmany 2021), Eritrea, Somalia, and Yemen (R. Jabado unpub. data). Along the southwest coast of India, 2.4 tonnes of this species were reportedly previously caught in trawls during 2003–2004 (Raje et al. 2007). It is a rare component of artisanal catches in the Seychelles (J. Neville pers. comm. 2023) and was previously reported as uncommon in the Maldives (Anderson and Ahmed 1993).

In the Andaman Sea in Thailand, landing surveys in 2005 noted the species accounted for 0.6% of sharks but in 2014–2015, no Snaggletooth Shark were observed (Arunrugstichai et al. 2018). By contrast, in the Andaman Islands, up to 400–500 mature individuals were observed annually at landing sites from 2017–2021 as incidental catch in longline fisheries targeting snapper, carangids, and yellowfin tuna; however, the number of individuals landed fluctuated greatly due to changes in fishing grounds (K.K. Bineesh unpub. data). In Indonesia, only four individual Snaggletooth Sharks were observed in tangle net fishery landings at Muara Angke from 2001–2005, and only 109 individuals were observed in target shark fishery landings in Tanjung Luar over nine years from 2014–2022; declines in this species have been reported by fishers in eastern Indonesia from 2003–2013 (Jaiteh et al. 2017, Simeon et al. 2019, D'Alberto et al. 2022, N. Simeon unpub. data). In Taiwan, the species was previously common at some fish markets in 1998 but by 2012, was not particularly common in fish market surveys and is possibly now rare (Ebert et al. 2013). Reconstructed catches of inshore shark species (Carcharhinidae and Triakidae) in the Gulf of Thailand, South China Sea, Sulu-Celebes Sea, and the Indonesian Sea declined by 48% over 28 years (1989–2016) (Pauly et al. 2020), which is an equivalent period of three generation lengths (27 years) for the Snaggletooth Shark. Although landings data are not a direct measure of abundance and are not species-specific, these can be used to infer population reduction where landings have decreased while fishing effort has remained stable or increased.

In Papua New Guinea, it is rare in comparison to other inshore shark species and in Australia, the species represents a small proportion of managed trawl and gillnet fisheries catches (Harry et al. 2011, White et al. 2017, Braccini and Murua 2022). The species was observed only infrequently in a global survey of coral reefs accounting for 0.18% of reef sharks observed, although surveys did not include all habitats of this species (MacNeil et al. 2020, Simpfendorfer et al. 2023). On these reefs, declines of 60–73% in five common resident reef shark species were revealed with the steepest declines associated with areas of poverty, weak governance, and a lack of shark management (Simpfendorfer et al. 2023), which is prevalent across much of the Snaggletooth Sharks Western Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia range.

While the species may be naturally rare and there is limited information available on this species, its large size, relative rarity, and the presence of intensive and mostly unregulated fisheries (except for Australia) mean that, like many large carcharhinids and reef shark species (that are morphologically and ecologically similar to hemigaleids), it will have undergone significant declines. Fishing pressure has continued to increase across much of its range over the past three decades while the species no longer occurs in some areas and continues to decline in others. Based on a precautionary approach, it is inferred that the Snaggletooth Shark has undergone a population reduction of 50–79% over the past three generation lengths (27 years) due to actual levels of exploitation.

The Snaggletooth Shark is demersal in coastal sandy, seagrass, rocky reef, and estuarine habitats from the surface to depths 132 m (Ebert et al. 2021). It reaches a maximum size of 256 cm total length (TL) with females mature at approximately 120 cm TL and males mature at 110–136 cm TL (White et al. 2007, Jabado et al. 2016, Ebert et al. 2021). Reproduction is viviparous with a yolk-sac placenta, litter sizes of 2–11 pups, a possible biennial reproductive cycle, and size-at-birth of 38–65 cm TL (Henderson et al. 2004, White et al. 2006, Ebert et al. 2021). Age parameters from Australia indicate potentially relatively fast growth rates with female age-at-maturity at 2–3 years and a maximum observed age of 15 years; generation length is therefore estimated as 9 years (Smart et al. 2013).

The Snaggletooth Shark is targeted and taken as bycatch in industrial and artisanal fisheries in a variety of gear including gillnet, longline and demersal trawl, and is retained in some countries for the meat and fins. The majority of the geographic distribution of this species overlaps with intense coastal fisheries that with increasing populations have increased in effort over the past three decades. The species is heavily fished across its east African range and has not been reported recently in South African fisheries except for rare catches in the Kwa-Zulu Natal beach protection nets (<1 individual annually) (Cliff and Olbers 2022). It is caught in several east African artisanal fisheries; for e.g., it accounted for 3% of the elasmobranchs at Kilwa (Tanzania) landing sites and fish markets from 2020–2022 (Rumisha et al. 2023). In the Arabian Seas and adjacent waters, it is taken in very small quantities in fisheries throughout the Persian Gulf and Red Sea (Moore and Peirce 2013, Spaet and Berumen 2015, Jabado et al. 2015) and the high level of fisheries effort in the species' depth range is of concern. For example, uncontrolled expansion of industrial trawling in the Red Sea has depleted marine resources (PERSGA 2002); in Somalia, illegal and unregulated fishing by foreign trawlers and longliners is rife and impacting shark populations (Glaser et al. 2015); and in India, there were over 6,548 gill netters and 30,772 trawlers operating, with many other types of net gear also deployed in coastal areas (CMFRI-FSI-DoF 2020).

Sharks and rays are captured by a wide range of gears in Myanmar. In coastal waters before a nationwide ban on targeting sharks in 2004, large sharks were targeted by pelagic longlines up to 3 km in length. Since then, sharks are largely taken as incidental catch in intensive coastal artisanal fisheries (Howard et al. 2015, Mizrahi et al. 2020). The gillnet and trawl fisheries in Indonesia are very extensive and as a result, many shark species are highly exploited. For example, stocks of most species had declined by the late 1990s in the Java Sea by at least an order of magnitude from 1976–1997 (Blaber et al. 2009) and the Snaggletooth Shark has not been seen in the Java Sea in recent years (N. Simeon unpub. data). In the Gulf of Thailand, this species was once considered common, however, by the early 2000s, it was rare (L.J.V Compagno, pers. comm. 2003). Similarly, in the waters of the South China Sea (including Hong Kong and parts of mainland China) this species was recorded in historic surveys, but has been absent since the early 2000s (Lam and Sadovy de Mitcheson 2011) indicating that it may have become locally extinct in some parts of Asia.

The Snaggletooth Shark is a minor component of the Australian gillnet and trawl fisheries. For example, in the inshore gillnet fishery on the east coast (Queensland) it accounts for 0.3% of the catch and in the southwest coast (Western Australia) shark gillnet fishery, only two individuals were observed from 1993–2020 (Harry et al. 2011, Braccini and Murua 2022). In Western Australia, fishing intensity is currently negligible with no directed shark fishing occurring north of 26°S since 2012, prohibition on landing sharks in most commercial fisheries, and low recreational catch of sharks (Braccini et al. 2020, Braccini et al. 2021, Braccini and Murua 2022). The species' catch in the Australian Northern Prawn Fishery is small, it is prohibited from retention, and estimates of fishing mortality indicated that the catch is sufficiently low to ensure sustainability (Zhou and Griffiths 2008).

The species is used for its meat, fins, liver oil, cartilage, and skin; the meat is often sold fresh at local markets (White et al. 2006, Last and Stevens 2009). The fins are traded internationally, though as a relatively small component of the fin trade, accounting for 0.29% and 0.10–0.18% of sampled fins traded in China and Hong Kong, respectively (Fields et al. 2018, Cardeñosa et al. 2020). Fins of this species were confirmed genetically in the illegal fin trade from Mozambique, in a sample of over 100 confiscated fins (~1%, Asbury et al. 2021). The offal is sometimes processed into fishmeal in at least India.

There are no species-specific conservation or management measures in place for this species. In Australia, fisheries are well regulated with limited entry, catch or effort limits, and gear restrictions. Throughout much of the rest of its range there are few effective regulations that limit the take of this species. Several nations within its range have general regulations that apply to sharks, and the numerous marine protected areas throughout its range may provide some benefit to the species. Further research is needed on population size and trends, life history, and catch rates should be monitored.