Somniosus pacificus Bigelow & Schroeder, 1944

Love, Milton S., Bizzarro, Joseph J., Cornthwaite, Maria, Frable, Benjamin W. & Maslenikov, Katherine P., 2021, Checklist of marine and estuarine fishes from the Alaska-Yukon Border, Beaufort Sea, to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Zootaxa 5053 (1), pp. 1-285 : 21

Somniosus pacificus Bigelow & Schroeder, 1944 .

Mud Shark or Pacific Sleeper Shark. To at least 4.3 m (14.1 ft) ( Ebert 1987), with unconfirmed, deep-water observations to 7.0 m (23 ft) ( Yano et al. 2007). Taiwan to Bering Sea to south-eastern Chukchi Sea (66°20’ N, 165°47’W), and on Russian side of southern Chukchi Sea ( Mecklenburg and Steinke 2015) to Pacific Ocean off southern Baja California ( Compagno 1984). Possible hybrids of this species and Somniosus microcephalus (Bloch & Schneider, 1801) have been taken somewhat west of Baffin Bay, eastern Canada ( Hussey et al. 2015). There is one anecdotal report of a large shark (possibly this species) that was taken near Tuktoyaktuk, northwest Territory, Canada (Reist in Coad and Reist 2018). Reports of S. pacificus as far south as Pisco, Peru ( Chirichigno and Vélez 1998) and Bahía de San Antonio, Chile (33°35’S) ( Brito 2004a) are not considered valid and probably represent S omniosus antarcticus Whitley, 1939 ( Ebert et al. 2009). Depth: surface, intertidal to about 2,205 m (7,232 ft) (min.: Bright 1959; max.: Yeh and Drazen 2009); at the greatest depths in the southern part of the range.