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Around our Shores | Lesser Spotted Dogfish
Around Our Shores | Lesser Spotted Dogfish
We are very lucky, living on an island as we do, to be surrounded by some truly fascinating sea and shoreland life. We hope you'll enjoy this regular feature of exploring sealife typical to the UK.
We'd love to see and share your pictures via our Facebook page of aquatic life spotted and enjoyed around our coast!
Lesser Spotted Dogfish (Scyliorhinus Caniculus) a.k.a Small Spotted Catshark
Sandpaper-rough skinned, the Dogfish features unusual scales which consist of a base buried in the skin from which arises a backward-sloping spine. This type of scale or 'denticle' is also known as a dentoid or placoid scale, and is probably the most primitive of the different scale types.
The mouth is crescent shaped and located on the flat underside of the head. For food, they grab what they can from the free-swimming population of the sea, and when that source of food is scarce they use their long snouts to rout out molluscs and worms from the seabed. The Lesser Spotted Dogfish grows to a maximum of 20-28" inches in length.
Well distributed around our coast and at times present in large numbers, in times past they were only landed by fishermen when all other fish were scarce and fetched only a few pence per stone. Dogfishes are commonly sold as 'Rock Salmon' in your local chippy.
To read our other Around our Shores blogs exploring the British Coast please click here.
To browse our range of marine supplies for saltwater aquariums please click here.
Photo credit(s): Shutterstock
Related keyword searches: Dogfish, Sea Fish, British Fish.
