Fr:	Squalelet feroce
Sp:	Tollo cigarro
It:	Squalo Cookiecutter (Messina)
Ma:	N/A

Diagnosis

A small, slender, cigar-shaped shark with two very small spineless, roughly subequal dorsal fins set posteriorly and close together; no anal fin; ventral lobe of caudal fin noticeably well-developed and almost subequal to dorsal lobe. Low keels on caudal peduncle. Snout short, bulbous and broadly conical; eyes fairly large; spiracles prominent. Lips fleshy and expanded; lower-jaw teeth conspicuously large, triangular-cusped, in 25 to 31 rows; upper teeth small. Gill-slits very small. Pectoral fins small. Colour dark brown or dark tan dorsally, lighter ventrally; a distinctive collar of darker pigment encircling the anterior body at the level of the gills. Posterior margins of all fins lighter and rather transluscent.

Size

To about 50cm. Size at birth unknown.

Status & Distribution

Mediterranean Sea: Very rare but essentially unknown regionally. Apparently western and central Mediterranean, in the Ionian Sea and southern Tyrrhenian Sea near Sicily (?)
Northeastern Atlantic: Southern areas of the region, primarily from about the Cape Verdes southwards; usually far offshore over deep oceanic waters.

Biology

A rather poorly-known, enigmatic shark of widespread but spotty distribution in warmer oceanic waters, ranging from the surface down to at least 1000m and probably undertaking diurnal vertical migrations over considerable distances; normally encountered far offshore over deep water. Cookiecutters are unique sharks, having gained notoriety as facultative ectoparisites upon a wide variety of large marine animals, including cetaceans, northern elephant seals, and other pinnipeds, tunas, billfish and even the equally-mysterious megamouth shark. Their predatory ethology is probably one revolving around surprise ambush - luring potential and unwitting predators to within range, perhaps by bioluminescent attraction and thereby imitating squid or similar creatures. The cookiecutter then "turns the tables", so-to-speak, by attacking (sometimes head-on) and attaching itself ghoul-like to the skin of its prey. The specialised, suctorial lips and fearsome lower-jaw teeth are clearly effective in removing deep round plugs of tissue from prey (i.e., "cookiecutting"), as attested to by the fresh and healed wounds inflicted by these sharks upon other animals. The writer has seen one subadult female northern elephant seal hauled-out at S.E. Farallon Island, Marin Co., California, with at least three fresh, closely-spaced cookiecutter bites to the thorax although whether these were inflcited by a single shark in quick repeated bouts is unknown. Cookiecutters have damaged the sonar-dome covering on nuclear submarines through opportunistic attacks. The Mediterranean citation follows recent observations by Dr. Antonio Potoschi and colleagues, engaged in studies of bluefin tuna and swordfish at the Dept. Marine Biology, Univ. Messina, Sicily (pers. comm.), who have noted "very fresh" cookiecutter bites to bluefin tuna caught off Sicily. According to Potoschi, these bites can only have been inflicted within the Mediterranean, and most likely near Sicily, based upon the known migratory routes and spatiotemporal distribution of varying size-classes of bluefin. If correct, then the Mediterranean occurrences would seem to imply two further prospects.

 
1. The potential for these sharks to be caught elsewhere within the Northeastern Atlantic, north of Cape Verde;
2. The possibility that these sharks gather seasonally at favourable "ambush sites" located upon the migratory routes of bluefin tuna and similar large prey. It seems inconceivable that a cookiecutter shark could actively shadow bluefin tuna over any great distance, but arguably raises the further question as to whether these sharks can "hitch" rides upon migratory prey in some remora-like fashion over large distances.