Argentine Angelshark

• Maximum lengthAt least 1.3 m (4.3 ft); reports to 1.7 m unconfirmed
• WeightNo published maximum; a 1.3 m adult weighs roughly 15–20 kg (33–44 lb)
• LifespanUnknown; no ageing study exists
• Depth rangeAbout 50–400 m (165–1,300 ft), mostly 100–300 m
• DietBottom-living fish, shrimps, squid
• IUCN statusCritically Endangered (assessed 2017)

How to recognise an Argentine angelshark

At first sight an angelshark passes for a ray: the body is flattened, the pectoral fins spread like wings and the eyes and spiracles sit on top of the head. The giveaway is the gills. On a ray the gill slits open underneath; on an angelshark they lie on the sides of the head, tucked into the notch between the head and the pectoral fins, and the pectorals are not fused to the head as they are in a skate (see how sharks and rays differ). The mouth is at the front of the blunt snout, flanked by a simple, spatula-tipped barbel on each nostril, and the two small dorsal fins sit far back on a thick tail that ends in a fin with the lower lobe longer than the upper.

Three angelsharks share the south-western Atlantic, and telling them apart matters because their fortunes differ. The Argentine angelshark is the largest and darkest of the three: dark brown to reddish brown above, sometimes almost purple, with scattered darker spots and occasionally a few pale ones, but no eye-like ocelli. Between the spiracles the skin carries only small, uniform denticles; there is no row of enlarged thorns down the middle of the back. That thorn row is the mark of the smaller angular angelshark (Squatina guggenheim), which also has a more angular pectoral margin. The third species, the hidden angelshark (S. occulta), is intermediate and was only separated in 1991. Each jaw of the Argentine angelshark holds about 24 rows of small, single-cusped, needle-like teeth built for gripping slippery prey.

How big does the Argentine angelshark get?

The honest answer is that the upper limit is uncertain. The species was described in 1930 from Argentine fish-market specimens, and the largest reliably examined individuals are about 1.3 m (4.3 ft) long. Older catalogues add that it "possibly reaches 1.7 m", a figure that has been copied into FishBase and most websites since, but no measured 1.7 m specimen has been published, and some of the big angelsharks of the early literature were probably the hidden angelshark before the two were told apart. The size bar below uses 1.7 m as the outside possibility.

Most of the animals landed by trawlers are 90 cm to 1.2 m. Maturity is reached at roughly 1.2 m, and because the three local angelsharks were lumped together in catch records for decades there is no clean measurement of size at birth for this species; by comparison with its relatives, newborns are probably 25 to 30 cm. No published weight exists either. Angelsharks are heavy for their length because of the broad body and large liver, and a 1.3 m adult would weigh in the region of 15 to 20 kg. Females of the genus generally grow larger than males, and the same is assumed here.

Where Argentine angelsharks live

This is a shark of one stretch of coast. It occurs only in the south-western Atlantic, from the Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul in the north, through the waters of Uruguay and the shared Argentine-Uruguayan fishing zone off the Río de la Plata, to the Buenos Aires coast and the north of Argentine Patagonia. The strongholds, at least historically, were the wide shelf off southern Brazil and the cool water south of the Río de la Plata in Argentina.

Of the three regional angelsharks it lives deepest. The angular angelshark occupies the inner shelf and the hidden angelshark the middle shelf; the Argentine angelshark is found mainly from about 100 to 300 m on the outer shelf and the top of the continental slope, with the shallowest records around 50 m and the deepest close to 400 m. The bottom there is sand and mud, cooled by the Malvinas (Falkland) Current, and the shark spends its days buried in it with only the eyes exposed. Whether it moves seasonally is unknown; angelsharks elsewhere shift inshore to give birth, and the concentration of pregnant females caught off southern Brazil in spring hints that this one does too.

The map below shows the full historical range; trawl surveys since the 2000s still find the species across most of it, at a small fraction of 1980s densities.

What Argentine angelsharks eat and how they hunt

Angelsharks do not chase anything. The Argentine angelshark settles on the bottom, flicks sand over its back with the pectoral fins until only the eyes and spiracles show, and waits. When a fish or shrimp passes within a head-length, the front of the body snaps upward and forward, the jaws shoot out and the mouth opens so quickly that water and prey are sucked in together. The whole strike lasts about a tenth of a second. The shark then resettles and can wait days for the next meal.

Stomach contents from trawl-caught animals in southern Brazil and the Río de la Plata region show a diet dominated by bottom-living bony fish: small hakes, croakers and cusk-eels, flatfish and the young of larger species, along with penaeid shrimps, squid and, less often, crabs. It does not feed in midwater; the small, pointed teeth are for holding, not cutting, and everything is swallowed whole.

Because it hunts in the dark of 100 m and deeper, the eyes are less important than the other senses. The ampullae of Lorenzini clustered around the snout register the electric field of a fish resting on the sand, and the lateral line picks up the movement of anything swimming overhead.

Behaviour and adaptations

Almost everything known about how this shark behaves comes from dead animals in fish markets and from its better-studied relatives in aquariums. What the specimens show is a body engineered for lying flat: the flattened skull, the pectoral fins with their thickened leading edges for digging in, the dorsal fins pushed back out of the way, and the enlarged spiracles behind the eyes through which a buried shark draws clean water down to the gills without opening its mouth.

Angelsharks are solitary and mostly nocturnal, resting buried by day and moving short distances after dark to a fresh ambush site. In the Canary Islands, where the European angelshark has been tracked, individuals stay within a few kilometres of a home site for months and return to it after excursions. Nothing equivalent has been done in the south-western Atlantic, but the pattern is probably similar: a sedentary animal with a small home range that does not evade a trawl.

The colour pattern is camouflage rather than warning. The dark, spotted back matches the mud of the outer shelf, and the pale belly is never seen unless the shark is lifted. When threatened an angelshark does not flee; it stays still, relying on concealment, and if grabbed it swings its head around with surprising speed to bite. That reflex is the only context in which the species is ever aggressive.

Reproduction and lifespan

The Argentine angelshark is ovoviviparous, like every angelshark: the eggs develop and hatch inside the mother, the embryos live on their yolk sacs, and the pups are born alive and fully formed. Both ovaries are functional. The only litter figures in the literature are 7 to 11 pups, and they rest on a small number of pregnant females examined in Brazil; the true range is probably wider. Gestation has not been measured, but in its relatives it lasts roughly 10 to 12 months, and the appearance of full-term embryos in spring catches suggests birth in late spring and early summer, most likely in shallower water than the adults normally use.

Maturity comes at around 1.2 m, which for a slow-growing angelshark probably means an age of 8 to 12 years, although no one has validated a growth curve for the species. Nor has anyone determined its lifespan. Vertebral bands have been read for the angular angelshark and give ages into the teens; the Argentine angelshark is larger and presumably longer-lived, so 20 years or more is a fair guess and no more than that (see how long sharks live).

What matters for conservation is the arithmetic. A female that matures at about ten, produces perhaps nine pups every year or two, and dies before she reaches her thirties can replace herself only if most of those pups survive to breed. Bottom trawls that remove adults and juveniles alike break that equation, which is why the population has not rebounded even where fishing effort has fallen.

Is the Argentine angelshark dangerous?

No. The SharkSider database contains no incident attributed to the Argentine angelshark, and none is likely: it lives at depths of 100 m and more on the outer shelf, far below any swimmer, diver or surfer, and the only people who touch one are trawler crews sorting a catch. The handful of "angel shark" bites on record worldwide, mostly waders on Canary Islands beaches in Spain, involve the European angelshark, a shallow-water relative that people step on in the surf.

On deck the story is different. An angelshark hauled up in a net will lie still and then, if handled by the tail or head, whip its jaws around and clamp on a hand or forearm. The teeth are small but numerous and the bite leaves a ring of punctures that bleeds freely. Fishermen in southern Brazil and Argentina treat the species with respect for that reason, and the sensible rule is the one that applies to every angelshark: hold it behind the pectoral fins, keep fingers away from the mouth, and get it back over the side. The attack records for Brazil and Argentina are on their own pages; none involves this species.

The SharkSider database has no incident attributed to this species. The database draws on the International Shark Attack File, the Global Shark Attack File and verified local reports, and is updated weekly.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List assesses the Argentine angelshark as Critically Endangered, the highest category short of extinction, with the assessment dated 2017 and published in the 2020 update. The basis is a population decline estimated at more than 80 percent over three generations, driven by bottom trawling. Off southern Brazil, angelshark catch rates fell by about 85 percent between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s as the trawl fleet expanded across the shelf, and the three regional species were landed together under a single name, so none of them could be managed separately.

Brazil responded in 2014 by listing all three of its angelsharks as Critically Endangered under federal law and banning their capture, landing and sale, a measure that is only partly enforced and does nothing for animals killed in nets and discarded. In Argentina and Uruguay the species remains a bycatch of the industrial trawl and bottom longline fisheries for hake and other groundfish in the shared fishing zone, and is still sold when landed. There is no species-specific catch limit in either country, and the Argentine angelshark is not listed on CITES or on the appendices of the Convention on Migratory Species.

The threats are the familiar ones for a flat, sedentary shark (see why sharks are endangered and our page on bycatch): it lies on the smooth bottom trawlers prefer, does not swim away from a net, and breeds too slowly to absorb the losses.

Similar species and close relatives

The closest relatives are the two other south-western Atlantic angelsharks that share its coast and, until the 1990s, its name. The angular angelshark (Squatina guggenheim) is smaller, rarely passing 1 m, lives on the inner shelf and carries a row of enlarged thorns down the midline of its back; it is also listed as Endangered. The hidden angelshark (S. occulta) lacks the thorn row, lives at intermediate depths and is likewise Critically Endangered. All three are caught in the same trawls and sold under the same names, cação-anjo in Brazil and pez ángel in Argentina.

Elsewhere in the genus the resemblance is strong enough that only range settles the identity. The Atlantic angelshark of the eastern United States and Gulf of Mexico is the northern counterpart, the Pacific angelshark replaces it from California to Chile, and the African angelshark, sawback angelshark, Japanese angelshark and clouded angelshark fill the same role on other continental shelves. Beyond the family, the animal most often confused with an angelshark is a skate or guitarfish; the side-opening gills and the free pectoral fins settle the question at once.

• Angular Angelsharkspecies profile
• Atlantic Angel Shark (Sand Devil)species profile
• Pacific Angelsharkspecies profile
• African Angelsharkspecies profile
• Sawback Angelsharkspecies profile
• Japanese Angelsharkspecies profile

Written and reviewed by

SharkSider Editorial Team

A small team focused on researching sharks and making marine biology easy to understand. Every page is reviewed against current species records and the SharkSider attack database, and updated when new incidents or research appear.

Published September 10, 2022 · Last updated September 22, 2026 · No incident attributed to this species in the SharkSider attack database, which is updated weekly.