Although sawfish look somewhat like sharks, their flattened bodies and wide pectoral fins reveal that they are actually rays. Their snouts (rostrum) are studded with denticles, specialized scales, which they use to thrash from side to side to stun crustaceans and invertebrates on the muddy floors of estuaries and shallow bays. Largetooth sawfish grow to over 20 feet long, and can be visibly identified from their near relatives by the large size and wider spacing of the ‘teeth’ along their rostrum.

Largetooth sawfish. Photo © Simon Fraser University, Wikicommons
Largetooth sawfish. Photo © Simon Fraser University, Wikicommons

The largetooth sawfish (P. pristis) and its close relative the smalltooth sawfish (P. pectinata) are the only two sawfish species to be found in the western Atlantic Ocean. Both species once covered a wide range of habitats, stretching over the tropical and sub-tropical marine environments, as well as estuarine and contiguous freshwater habitats in the eastern Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean to Central and South American as well as Africa. Today, the decline of the largetooth sawfish population seems to have mostly removed them from Florida’s waters. The current reports of largetooth sawfish encounters are rare, and pin their location to the Texas coast close to the Louisiana line, and Southeastern United States waters seem to be the northernmost boundary of current populations, as compared to their historically freer range, although they are believed to also reside in Central America and some Western African coastal locations.

Read the entire largetooth sawfish species profile