page_title: Smalltooth sawfish
section_title: Conservation status
hierarchical_section_title: Smalltooth sawfish / Conservation status
caption_attribution_description: English: Sawfish Atlantis Paradise Island photo D Ramey Logan
context_page_description: The smalltooth sawfish is a species of sawfish in the family Pristidae. It is found in shallow tropical and subtropical waters in coastal and estuarine parts of the Atlantic. Reports from elsewhere are now believed to be misidentifications of other species of sawfish. It is a critically endangered species that has disappeared from much of its historical range.
context_section_description: Smalltooth sawfish are extremely vulnerable to overexploitation because of their propensity for entanglement in nets, their restricted habitat, and low rate of population growth.  The species is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN Red List. The Pristis pectinata species is critically endangered mainly because of the fishing pressure business which feeds into the shark-fin industry. Historically it was found in 47 countries, but it has been extirpated from 16 and possibly extirpated from another 25, leaving only 6 countries where it certainly still survives. In terms of area this means that it certainly survives in only 19% of its historical range. It is the only sawfish that certainly still survives in the United States (the largetooth sawfish, P. pristis, has likely been extirpated from this country), and it has been listed by the National Marine Fisheries Service as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 2003. It is estimated that the smalltooth sawfish population in the United States now equals less than 5% of the historical population in this country. In the United States it once occurred from Texas to New York (northern range as summer visitors), but today it is essentially limited to Florida. In the Everglades region of Florida the population is now stable and possibly slowly rising. Other countries where it certainly survives are the Bahamas, Cuba, Belize, Honduras and Sierra Leone, but whether it survives in the Western Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic coast of South America is unclear. The species is listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
  Small numbers are maintained in public aquariums in North America with studbooks listing 12 individuals (5 males, 7 females) in 2014. The only kept elsewhere are at a public aquarium in Colombia. It is the only species of sawfish that has been bred in captivity.
caption: Atlantis Paradise Island became the world's first aquarium to breed sawfish when four pups were born there in 2012.[27]
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