Population
The population size is unknown, but numbers have decreased as much as 99% in some areas since the 1970s. This species is harvested, via Demersal trawling or droplining, for meat and liver oil (squalene). Upper-slope dogfish species are more vulnerable to capture than midslope species, because they are targeted throughout their vertical distribution and most of their local geographic distribution. The low reproductive rate, late age of maturity and long lifespan typical of these sharks means the dumb gulper shark is likely unable to recover quickly after depletion.
Read more about this topic: Dumb Gulper Shark
Famous quotes containing the word population:
“We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The population question is the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no political Oedipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible monster over-multiplication, all other riddle sink into insignificance.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)