CatsharkWhere and when to see them

To observe catsharks without causing disturbance, maintain precise, motionless buoyancy just above the sea floor, taking extreme care not to stir up silt or damage delicate benthic encrustations with your fins. Approach slowly and horizontally rather than descending directly from above, as sudden overhead shadows trigger their flight response. When diving at night or exploring dark overhangs, never shine the intense centre of your primary torch beam straight into their sensitive eyes; instead, use the soft diffuse halo of the light or switch to a gentle red-light mode. For underwater photography, a macro lens or a moderate wide-angle lens with dual strobes fitted with diffusers works best. Position your strobes wide and angled outward to prevent backscatter in silty coastal waters, and set a fast shutter speed to capture sharp textures of their patterned skin. Catsharks are docile and harmless, but divers should never attempt to touch, restrain, or disturb sleeping individuals.

The best encounters depend heavily on the specific regional catshark species you are targeting. In the Northeast Atlantic and the United Kingdom, diving for small-spotted and nursehound catsharks is most productive between May and October, when water temperatures rise and coastal visibility improves in areas such as Cornwall, Pembrokeshire, and the Inner Hebrides. For divers visiting the rich temperate reefs of South Africa around False Bay and the Cape Peninsula, pyjama sharks and leopard catsharks can be seen year-round, though the calmest sea conditions and best underwater visibility often occur from November to April. In the Mediterranean, particularly around Malta and the Balearic Islands, the warmer summer months from June to September offer the most comfortable diving conditions for spotting small-spotted catsharks resting among deep rocky gullies.

Catsharks inhabit a diverse spectrum of benthic marine environments across the globe, ranging from shallow intertidal rock pools down to continental shelves and deep-sea slopes exceeding 2,000 metres. Most recreational diving encounters take place in depths between 3 and 50 metres, where these sharks favour temperate and subtropical rocky reefs, dense kelp forests, structural shipwrecks, and sandy or gravelly channels adjacent to vertical reef walls. Geographically, catsharks are widely distributed across the Eastern Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the North Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Western Pacific, and the coastal waters of southern Africa. The waters this animal calls home include the rugged kelp-covered shorelines of the British Isles, the warm rocky crevices of the western Mediterranean, and the nutrient-dense, upwelling-rich coastal bays of South Africa.

Catsharks are opportunistic, nocturnal benthic carnivores that forage across rocky reefs, sandy plains, and muddy substrates. Their diet consists predominantly of small decapod crustaceans such as crabs, hermit crabs, and prawns, alongside cephalopods including small octopuses and cuttlefish. They also consume a variety of polychaete worms, gastropods, and small bottom-dwelling bony fishes, such as gobies, blennies, and flatfish. Catsharks locate their prey under the cover of darkness by combining an acute sense of smell with electroreceptors on their snouts that detect the faint bioelectric signals emitted by buried organisms. With relatively small mouths lined with multiple rows of tiny, sharp, cusped teeth, they grasp struggling prey firmly, crushing hard exoskeletons or swallowing soft-bodied animals whole. Feeding occurs almost exclusively during twilight and nocturnal hours, allowing them to ambush diurnal prey resting in crevices or forage unmolested by larger diurnal predators.