The white ghost catshark (Apristurus aphyodes) is a deepwater catshark of the north-east Atlantic that reaches about 54 cm (21 in) and lives on soft sediment at 1,000–1,800 m west of the British Isles. Its whitish-grey body, bell-shaped snout and long, low-slung fins mark it out from the darker Apristurus species that share the same slopes.
It feeds on small squid, shrimps and bottom fish, and lays eggs two at a time in leathery cases. The IUCN lists it as Least Concern because most of its habitat lies below the depths that bottom trawlers work. No person has ever been bitten by one; the species has never been seen alive in the wild by a diver.
- Maximum length54 cm (21 in)
- WeightNo reliable measurement; well under 1 kg
- LifespanUnknown; no ageing study exists
- Depth range1,014–1,800 m (3,330–5,900 ft)
- DietSmall squid, crustaceans and bony fish
- IUCN statusLeast Concern (assessed 2023)
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Carcharhiniformes
- Family
- Pentanchidae
- Genus
- Apristurus
- Species
- Apristurus aphyodes
- Family (common)
- Deepwater catsharks
- Also known as
- Ghost catshark (Rockall form)
On this page
- How to recognise a white ghost catshark
- How big does the white ghost catshark get?
- Where white ghost catsharks live
- What white ghost catsharks eat
- Behaviour, senses and life in the dark
- Reproduction and lifespan
- Is the white ghost catshark dangerous?
- Conservation status
- Similar species and close relatives
- Frequently asked questions
- References
How to recognise a white ghost catshark
The name does the first job for you. Where most members of the genus Apristurus are chocolate brown, charcoal or nearly black, this one is a uniform pale whitish-grey, and the species name aphyodes, from the Greek for "whitish", was chosen for exactly that reason. Freshly trawled animals look almost translucent; some show a faintly darker margin on the fins, but there is no pattern of spots, saddles or bars anywhere on the body.
The shape is the standard deepwater-catshark plan: a slender, roughly cylindrical body, a flattened head and a long snout that is bell-shaped from above, broadening in front of the eyes and ending in a rounded tip. The nostrils are large and set well forward. The mouth is wide, with long labial furrows curving around both jaws, and the teeth are small, with a tall central cusp flanked by one or two cusplets on each side.
Both dorsal fins are small and set far back; the first begins above the rear of the pelvic fins and the second is about the same size or slightly larger. The anal fin is long and low, running almost from the pelvic fins to the tail, and the caudal fin is long with a weak lower lobe. Separating this fish from the ghost catshark and the Iceland catshark comes down to colour, snout proportions and the vertebral and spiral-valve counts used in the original description.
How big does the white ghost catshark get?
This is a small shark by any standard. The largest specimens examined measured about 54 cm (21 in) in total length, and most adults trawled from the Rockall Trough fall between 47 and 54 cm. The old figure of "about 1.7 ft" is a rounded version of the same number, so the correction is minor: the maximum is a little over half a metre, not more.
No weight has ever been published for the species. Given the slim body and the soft, low-density tissue typical of deep-slope catsharks, a full-grown adult probably weighs a few hundred grams and certainly under a kilogram; the table above gives no figure because there is no measured one to give.
Sexual dimorphism is slight. Males mature at roughly 47–50 cm and females at about the same size or a shade larger, so the mature size range and the maximum almost overlap: a white ghost catshark spends most of its life as a juvenile and only a short final stretch as a full-sized adult. Hatchlings have not been described, but Apristurus of similar adult size leave the egg case at 8–10 cm. The size bar below sets the 54 cm maximum against a 1.8 m diver.
Where white ghost catsharks live
The known range is one of the smallest of any Atlantic shark. The type series was trawled from the Rockall Trough, the deep basin between the Rockall Plateau and the continental slope west of Scotland, at around 57–58°N, and later material extends the species into the Porcupine Seabight and along the slope west of Ireland. A handful of records reach south into the Bay of Biscay off France and northern Spain; reports from further south along the West African slope have not been confirmed with specimens and may belong to other pale Apristurus.
Within that area it is strictly a deep-slope fish. Captures come from 1,014 to 1,800 m (3,330–5,900 ft), most between 1,200 and 1,600 m, on flat or gently sloping bottoms of mud and fine sand. At those depths the water off north-west Europe is cold and stable, about 3–6 °C, with almost no light and a slow current, and the shark almost certainly spends its whole life within a narrow band of depth and temperature.
It is not recorded from the shallower Faroe–Shetland Channel or the Norwegian slope, where the Iceland catshark and the blackmouth catshark take over, and it does not occur in the Mediterranean. The map below shows the confirmed core of the range.
What white ghost catsharks eat
Stomachs examined from the Rockall Trough contained three groups of prey: small cephalopods, crustaceans, and small bony fish. The squid were mostly small mid-water species that sink or drift to the seabed; the crustaceans were shrimps, mysids and amphipods living on or just above the mud; and the fish were small slope species such as young grenadiers. Nothing in the diet is large, fast or dangerous, which fits a shark with a small mouth and teeth built to grip rather than cut.
How it hunts has never been watched, but the anatomy and the behaviour of its relatives tell a consistent story. Deepwater catsharks cruise slowly a few centimetres above the sediment, using the wide snout as a sensory scoop. The large nostrils and the dense field of ampullae of Lorenzini under the snout let the shark follow odour plumes and detect the faint electric fields of buried animals, and the long labial furrows point to suction feeding: the mouth cavity expands sharply and a shrimp is drawn in with the water.
Food is scarce at 1,500 m, so the species is almost certainly opportunistic and takes carrion when it finds it. Baited cameras elsewhere on the North Atlantic slope routinely record Apristurus at bait within an hour, and there is no reason to think this one behaves differently.
Behaviour, senses and life in the dark
No one has observed a white ghost catshark alive in its habitat, so this section rests on trawl catches and the biology of the genus. Individuals come up singly or a few at a time, never in the dense aggregations some slope sharks form, which suggests a solitary animal spread thinly over the sea floor. Males and females are taken together, so there is no sign of the sex-segregated schools seen in some dogfish.
Vision is of little use at 1,500 m and the eyes are modest. What the shark relies on instead is chemistry and electricity: the oversized nostrils and deeply grooved nasal flaps channel water across a large sensory surface, and the underside of the broad snout carries a dense array of electroreceptive pores. Together they find a buried amphipod or a dead fish without sight. The lateral line adds a warning of larger predators, of which the slope has several: Portuguese dogfish, leafscale gulper sharks and big grenadiers all take small sharks on occasion.
The body is built for the depth. The skeleton is lightly calcified, the muscle watery and the large oily liver gives near-neutral buoyancy, so the shark hovers over the mud at little cost. Growth is presumably slow and metabolism low, as in every deep-sea shark studied, and the narrow depth band it occupies argues against migration. The simple anatomy of catsharks is not primitive; it is a very old and successful design.
Reproduction and lifespan
The white ghost catshark is oviparous. Like other Apristurus, a female carries one egg in each of her two oviducts and lays them as a pair, each sealed in a tough, flattened case with tendrils at the corners that anchor it to the bottom or to sessile animals such as deep-sea corals and sponges. Females carrying fully formed cases have turned up in the trawl catch, which is how the paired laying was established; the cases themselves have not been described in detail, so we cannot give their size.
What follows is inferred from relatives. In cold, dark water the embryo develops extremely slowly, and incubation in deep-slope catsharks is thought to run well beyond a year. The hatchling is a miniature of the adult, able to feed at once, and there is no parental care. With only two eggs at a time, annual fecundity is low even if laying continues through the year, and no breeding season is known.
Maturity arrives at about 47–50 cm in males and around the same length in females. No one has aged the species: deep-sea catsharks lack the fin spines used to age dogfish and their vertebrae are too poorly calcified for reliable growth rings, so lifespan is genuinely unknown. The general pattern for deep-water sharks, laid out on our page on how long sharks live, is slow growth, late maturity and a long life, and this species is unlikely to differ.
Is the white ghost catshark dangerous?
No, and it could hardly be otherwise. This is a half-metre fish with a mouth the width of a coffee cup and teeth designed to hold a shrimp, living at least a kilometre below the deepest any recreational diver can go. The only people who handle one are fisheries scientists and trawler crews, and the animal is usually dead by the time it reaches the deck. There is no record anywhere of a bite from any Apristurus species, and the SharkSider database, summarised below, has none for this one.
The idea that all sharks are a threat is one of the myths we deal with on our shark-encounter page: of more than 500 species, a few dozen can injure a person and far fewer ever have. Catsharks are small bottom-feeders of no danger to anyone. If you swim off the west coast of Scotland or Ireland the sharks you might conceivably meet are basking sharks and small-spotted catsharks in the shallows; the white ghost catshark is more than a thousand metres beneath your feet and will stay there.
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 white ghost catshark as Least Concern, most recently in 2023. That may seem generous for a species with such a small known range, but the reasoning is sound: most of its depth range lies below the 800 m limit at which European Union rules have closed bottom trawling since 2016, and the deep-water trawl fishery in the Rockall Trough had already shrunk sharply over the previous decade. The population trend is unknown but not thought to be declining. It is not listed under CITES or the Convention on Migratory Species, and no country gives it specific legal protection.
The threats it faces are indirect. Where trawlers for roundnose grenadier, black scabbardfish and blue ling once worked the upper part of its depth range, small catsharks came up as bycatch and were discarded, almost always dead. That pressure has eased with the closures but not vanished: some fleets still work the 800–1,000 m band on the margins of its range, and any reopening of deeper grounds would put the species straight back into the net. Deep-sea mining of the Rockall Plateau and the warming and deoxygenation of North Atlantic deep water are longer-term unknowns.
The practical problem is knowledge. A species described from a few dozen specimens, with no population estimate, no age data and no fecundity figure, can decline a long way before anyone notices. The scientific trawl surveys run by Marine Scotland and the Irish Marine Institute are the only monitoring it gets, and keeping those going matters more for this shark than any listing. Why that is so hard for deep-sea species is explained on our page on why sharks are endangered.
Similar species and close relatives
Apristurus is the largest genus of sharks, with around forty described species, most of them dark, soft-bodied fish of the continental slopes, and the white ghost catshark is one of its palest members. In the same waters it overlaps with the ghost catshark (A. manis), a bigger, greyer species that grows to 85 cm and ranges across the North Atlantic, and the Iceland catshark (A. laurussonii), a dark brown fish of similar size that is far more common in trawl catches. Further afield the genus includes the Panama ghost catshark of the eastern Pacific, the longnose catshark and brown catshark of North American waters, and the longfin catshark of the western Pacific; all share the bell-shaped snout, long anal fin and rear-set dorsals.
In the Rockall Trough two other catsharks are regularly confused with it in the catch. The blackmouth catshark (Galeus melastomus) is patterned with dark saddles, has a black mouth lining and a crest of enlarged denticles on the upper edge of the tail, and lives shallower; the mouse catshark (G. murinus) is plain grey-brown, also with the tail crest. A plain, whitish, crestless catshark with a very long anal fin from below a thousand metres can only be this species or a ghost catshark, and size and colour settle it.
- Ghost Catsharkspecies profile
- Iceland Catsharkspecies profile
- Panama Ghost Catsharkspecies profile
- Longnose Catsharkspecies profile
- Brown Catsharkspecies profile
Blackmouth Catsharkspecies profile
Frequently asked questions
How big is a white ghost catshark?
Small: the largest specimens on record are about 54 cm (21 in) long, and most adults from the Rockall Trough are 47 to 54 cm. No weight has ever been published, but an adult almost certainly weighs a few hundred grams. Males and females mature at roughly the same length, around 47 to 50 cm.
Where do white ghost catsharks live?
Only in the north-east Atlantic west of the British Isles, chiefly the Rockall Trough and Porcupine Seabight off Scotland and Ireland, with a few records south into the Bay of Biscay. They live on mud and fine sand at 1,014 to 1,800 m, in cold water of about 3 to 6 °C where no sunlight reaches.
Why is it called the white ghost catshark?
Because of its colour. Most deepwater catsharks in the genus Apristurus are dark brown or black, but this species is a uniform pale whitish-grey that looks almost translucent when freshly caught. The scientific name aphyodes is Greek for whitish. The ghost part echoes its larger relative, the ghost catshark, which shares the same slopes.
What do white ghost catsharks eat?
Small squid, crustaceans such as shrimps and amphipods, and small bottom-living bony fish. They find prey in total darkness by smell and by the electric sense in the snout, cruising just above the sediment and sucking food into a wide mouth. Like most deep-sea sharks they will also feed on carrion when they find it.
How do white ghost catsharks reproduce?
They lay eggs. A female produces one egg in each oviduct and lays them as a pair, each in a tough case with tendrils that anchor it to the seabed or to deep-sea corals. Incubation in cold, deep water probably takes more than a year, and the hatchling emerges as a small, fully independent copy of the adult.
How long do white ghost catsharks live?
Nobody knows. The species has never been aged, because catsharks lack the fin spines used to age dogfish and their vertebrae do not lay down clear growth rings. Deep-sea sharks in general grow slowly, mature late and live for decades, and there is no reason to expect the white ghost catshark to be an exception.
Is the white ghost catshark dangerous to humans?
No. It is a half-metre shark with tiny teeth that lives more than a kilometre deep, far beyond the reach of any diver, and has never been seen alive in the wild. There is no recorded bite from any species in its genus, and the SharkSider attack database contains no incident attributed to it.
Is the white ghost catshark endangered?
No. The IUCN Red List assesses it as Least Concern, mainly because most of its depth range lies below the 800 m limit where EU rules have banned bottom trawling since 2016. It has no CITES listing and no national protection. The real concern is how little is known: no population estimate, age data or fecundity figures exist.
When was the white ghost catshark discovered?
It was described in 1998 by Kazuhiro Nakaya and Matthias Stehmann from specimens trawled in the Rockall Trough west of Scotland. Before that, pale Apristurus from the area were lumped with other species. It remains one of the least-studied sharks in European waters, known from a few dozen individuals taken by research and commercial trawls.
References
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 2, 2022 · Last updated September 22, 2026 · No incident attributed to this species in the SharkSider attack database, which is updated weekly.
