This long-time-coming installment of the Perfect Little Killing Machines series starts with a story about a shark I got to spend a fair amount of time with. A couple years ago I was keeping a group of spiny dogfish in captivity as part of a…
There’s a bit of a pardox of public opinion regarding the effectiveness of spiny dogfish as predators. Depend on who you ask, they’re either forming a swimming wall of teeth annihilating everything in their path or they’re weak scavengers, poor excuses for sharks. This much-maligned…
Spiny dogfish have had a long history of interactions with humans. These sharks, once reviled as pests, became valued food fish (particularly in Europe), were declared overfished, rebounded much more quickly than expected, and are now targeted by a certified sustainable fishery on the U.S….