Human Interactions
Small and harmless to humans, the Arabian carpetshark is one of the few shark species suitable for private aquaria. It is collected for the aquarium trade, which is not believed to pose a substantial threat to its population. The meat and possibly the fins of this shark can be used, but because of its size most individuals landed are discarded. It is captured incidentally in intertidal hadra (artisanal stake-net traps), as well as in demersal trammel and trawl nets. The Arabian carpetshark forms the predominant component of the "cat shark" catch of Kuwaiti prawn trawls, which represents the second-largest bycatch (14% of total) of the fishery. It is also caught off Bahrain and likely elsewhere. Another potentially major threat to this species is habitat degradation: coral reefs in the Persian Gulf face bottom trawling, coastal development (especially large-scale land reclamation projects such as in the United Arab Emirates), Turkish dams on the Tigris-Euphrates river system, draining of marshes in Iraq, and oil spills. Coastal habitats off India are also similarly pressured. As both fishing and habitat degradation are likely to intensify in the region, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed the Arabian carpetshark as Near Threatened.
Read more about this topic: Arabian Carpetshark
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