Facts about the velvet belly lantern shark?

-a species of dogfish

-found from Iceland and norway to Gabon and South Africa. Also in the Mediterranean Sea, the Azores, the Canary islands, Cape Verde, and some off of Cape Province, South Africa.

-lives at depths ranging from 70-2,490 m or 230-8,170 ft

-usually no more than 45 cm long

-a bioluminescent shark

-young velvet bellies eat krill and small bony fish. older ones eat squid and shrimp

-they give birth to 6-20 young every 2 or 3 years

-robustly built

-moderately long, broad, flattened snout

-small upper teeth

-larger lower teeth

-it is brown from above, but abruptly changes to black on the under side

-its belly has numerous photophores that give off a blue-green light that you can see from 9.8 to 13 ft away

-Varying densities of photophores are arranged in nine patches on the shark's sides and belly, creating a pattern unique to this species

-one of the most abundant deep-sea sharks in the northeastern Atlantic

-these sharks are most abundant at 200-500m

-as these sharks mature and grow older they swim deeper so usually the larger sharks are found deeper

-on the scale of extinction they are Least Concerned

-in the family Etmopteridae

-scientific name is Etmopterus spinax

-they use both their eyes and a small gland in the brain to monitor information on -light shining down from above to change the brightness of their bellies

-this helps them so they can grab prey like krill almost invisibly

-these are 5 gilled sharks with blunt, frayed edge fins

-genus= Etmopterus

-unlike most sharks they don't have an anal fin

-this shark in addition to its bioluminescent belly it had bioluminescent eyes

-it has a distinct spin on the leading edge on each of its dorsal fins