Splendid Lanternshark

• Maximum length30 cm (12 in)
• WeightNo reliable published maximum; roughly 100–200 g
• LifespanUnknown; no ageing study exists
• Depth range120–370 m (390–1,215 ft); most records 120–210 m
• DietSquid and small deep-sea invertebrates
• IUCN statusLeast Concern (assessed 2019)

What a splendid lanternshark looks like

Colour is what earned this shark its name. The upper half of the body is a deep purple-black with a faint sheen; the lower half is darker still, almost matt blue-black, and the boundary between them runs cleanly along the flank. Against that background the fins stand out: the webbing of the tail and the fin margins ahead of it are a pale reddish brown, and there is a light patch between the base of the caudal fin and its terminal lobe.

The markings are the diagnostic detail. A dark oval blotch sits just ahead of the tail base, but the caudal fin itself carries no bands and the flank has no long horizontal streak. That combination separates Etmopterus splendidus from the blackbelly lanternshark, its nearest relative in the same waters, which does have an elongated flank mark and banding on the tail.

Head and fins

The head is short and the eyes are enormous, occupying most of its depth and set noticeably closer to the tip of the snout than to the gill slits, another point of difference from relatives whose eyes sit mid-head. Both dorsal fins carry a stout grooved spine at the leading edge, the second larger than the first, and there is no anal fin, the hallmark of the dogfish order. The skin is rough with hook-shaped denticles that do not form regular rows. Our guide to shark anatomy explains the terms.

How big is a splendid lanternshark?

You could close one hand around this shark. The largest recorded specimen measured 30 cm (11.8 in) in total length, and the females described in the original 1988 account were 25 cm and still immature. That is the entire size record for the species: a handful of animals from trawl hauls, none of them large.

Because the sample is so thin, several of the numbers usually given on a species page simply do not exist here. Nobody has published the length of a newborn, the length at which either sex matures, or the weight of an adult. An animal of 30 cm with a lanternshark's build and a large oil-filled liver would weigh somewhere between 100 and 200 grams, but that is an estimate from body proportions, not a measurement.

What can be said is that the splendid lanternshark belongs in the same size class as the smallest sharks alive. It is roughly half the length of the smooth lanternshark and about a third longer than the dwarf lanternshark of the Caribbean, which is often cited as the smallest shark of all. Our list of the ten smallest shark species shows how crowded this end of the scale has become. The scale bar underneath measures that 30 cm maximum against a 1.8 m diver.

Where splendid lanternsharks live

The confirmed range is a narrow arc of the north-western Pacific: the slope off southern Japan, the East China Sea north towards the Chinese mainland shelf edge, and the waters off Taiwan, where deep-water trawlers working out of Nanfangao bring up most of the specimens that reach science. The species was described from this region in 1988 by the Japanese researcher Kazunari Yano.

Scattered reports place it further south, in the Java Sea off Indonesia and around New Caledonia and Vanuatu. Those records have never been confirmed with material that modern taxonomists accept, and several similar lanternsharks have since been described from the same waters, so the southern part of the old range should be treated as unresolved rather than established.

Vertically the shark keeps to the upper continental slope. Most captures come from 120 to 210 m, with the recorded band reaching about 370 m, which is shallow for a lanternshark and puts the species squarely inside the depth range that commercial trawlers work. It is a creature of the permanent twilight layer, where the water sits at roughly 8 to 15 °C, sunlight is measured in single photons and the seabed drops away steeply from the shelf edge.

What splendid lanternsharks eat

Squid dominates the short list of prey items recovered from stomachs, alongside other small invertebrates of the midwater and the slope floor. No detailed dietary study has been published, so the picture comes from a handful of examined specimens rather than a proper sample, and it is likely that small fish feature as well, as they do in every lanternshark that has been studied properly.

The tooth arrangement tells you how the shark handles a meal. The upper jaw carries fine teeth with a central cusp and small side cusplets, built for holding; the lower jaw carries broader, single-cusped blades whose edges lock together into one continuous cutting margin. A squid seized in that grip cannot slide free, and a piece can be sawn out of something larger by twisting the body.

Hunting happens in the dark, which puts the burden on the non-visual senses. The electroreceptive ampullae of Lorenzini pick up the muscle activity of prey within a metre or so, and the lateral line registers the pressure wave of a moving squid well before that. Vision is not wasted, though: the outsized eyes of this species are tuned to blue-green light and would register both the bioluminescent flashes of prey and the shark's own signalling. Feeding is almost certainly opportunistic and irregular, as it is for most predators of the deep slope.

Light organs and daily life

The underside of a splendid lanternshark is covered in photophores, and they are not scattered at random. Researchers recognise about nine distinct luminous zones on an etmopterid: rostral, mandibular, pectoral, pelvic, infrapelvic, lateral, ventral, and upper and lower caudal. Each region is under hormonal control, which means the shark can brighten or dim parts of its body independently over minutes rather than milliseconds. Our page on bioluminescence in the ocean explains the chemistry that makes this possible.

The main purpose is concealment. In 150 m of water there is still enough downwelling daylight to silhouette a fish against the surface, and a belly that glows at exactly the brightness of the water above it erases that outline. The flank and tail markings almost certainly do something different: they are species-specific in shape and may work as recognition signals, letting a shark find a mate or avoid a rival in a place where nothing else is visible.

Beyond the light, behaviour is unknown. No splendid lanternshark has been observed alive, no aggregation has been reported, and no seasonal movement has been described. The shark is presumably taken by larger deep-water sharks and by predatory fish; our page on what eats sharks covers the usual suspects. The two grooved dorsal spines are the only visible defence it carries.

Breeding and lifespan

Splendid lanternsharks are aplacental viviparous, which older sources call ovoviviparous. The eggs are retained inside the mother, the embryos hatch internally and live on the contents of their yolk sacs, and the young are born fully formed with no placental connection at any stage. This is the standard arrangement across the family and there is no reason to think this species departs from it.

Beyond that, the record is empty. No pregnant female has been described in enough detail to count the embryos, so the litter size is unknown. The length at birth is unknown. The length at which males and females mature is unknown, and so is the gestation period. Other lanternsharks of similar size carry between one and a dozen pups and gestate for well over a year, which is the only guide available.

Age and growth

No one has put a number on the age of this species. Its vertebrae have never been sectioned, no growth curve has been fitted, and no maximum age has been proposed. The closest comparison is the smooth lanternshark, aged to 13 years in males and 17 in females off Portugal; a species of half that length might live a comparable span or rather less, but this is inference, not data. Our overview of how long sharks live explains why deep-water species are so hard to age.

Are splendid lanternsharks dangerous?

They are not. A fully grown splendid lanternshark is the length of a ruler, its jaws are a few centimetres across, and it lives at depths that no swimmer, snorkeller or recreational diver reaches. The two species have no point of contact in the water. The SharkSider database contains no record attributed to this shark, and there is no plausible scenario in which one would exist.

Handling is a different question, and a minor one. Like every dogfish, this species carries a sharp spine at the front of each dorsal fin, and a specimen grabbed carelessly on a sorting table can drive one into a palm. The wound is mechanical rather than venomous. The people at risk are trawler crews and fisheries observers, and the sensible precaution is to lift the animal by the tail. Among the roughly 540 shark species on our list of shark types, this one sits at the far harmless end.

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 assessed Etmopterus splendidus as Least Concern in 2019. The species appears to be reasonably common within its range, is rarely retained when caught, and has no directed fishery anywhere. It is not listed on CITES or the Convention on Migratory Species, and no country gives it specific legal protection.

The qualifier is that the shark lives shallower than most of its relatives. A depth band of 120 to 370 m is precisely where the deep-water trawl and longline fleets of Japan, Taiwan and the East China Sea operate, so bycatch is routine rather than occasional. Specimens that are kept go for fishmeal or are rendered for liver oil, neither of which supports a fishery on its own. The rest are discarded, and a small shark brought up from 200 m in a trawl codend is rarely alive when it goes back.

What is genuinely missing is information. There is no population estimate, no catch series that separates this species from the other lanternsharks landed with it, and no life-history data to say how quickly it could recover from a decline. The comparison worth making is the kitefin shark, once considered secure and now assessed as threatened after decades of deep-water fishing. Our page on why sharks are endangered sets out how that pattern repeats.

Close relatives and look-alikes

Within its own waters the shark most easily confused with this one is the blackbelly lanternshark, which shares the north-western Pacific slope and a similar size but shows a long horizontal flank streak and banded markings on the tail. The great lanternshark and smooth lanternshark both grow considerably larger and lack the reddish fin webbing, and the smooth lanternshark can be told at a touch by its unusually flat, widely spaced denticles.

Further afield the closest matches in appearance are the green lanternshark of the western Atlantic, the pink lanternshark of the Indo-Pacific and the ninja lanternshark described from the eastern Pacific in 2015. All are small, dark, photophore-studded dogfishes of the upper slope, and all are separated in practice by the exact shape of the flank and tail markings rather than by anything as convenient as size or colour. The velvet belly lanternshark of the Atlantic is the best-studied member of the family and the standard reference for what an etmopterid actually does for a living.

• Blackbelly Lanternsharkspecies profile
• Smooth Lanternsharkspecies profile
• Great Lanternsharkspecies profile
• Green Lanternsharkspecies profile
• Pink Lanternsharkspecies profile
• Ninja Lanternsharkspecies 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 November 1, 2022 · Last updated September 22, 2026 · No incident attributed to this species in the SharkSider attack database, which is updated weekly.