The gecko catshark (Galeus eastmani) is a species of catshark, part of the family Scyliorhinidae, native to the northwestern Pacific Ocean from southern Japan to Taiwan, and possibly also off Vietnam. It is a common, demersal species found at depths of . Its body is slender, with a pattern of dark saddles and blotches. The dorsal and caudal fins are edged in white, and there is a prominent crest of enlarged dermal denticles along the dorsal edge of the caudal fin. The gecko catshark is a schooling, opportunistic predator of bony fishes, cephalopods, and crustaceans. It is oviparous, with females producing two vase-shaped egg capsules at a time. This species is captured as bycatch, but does not appear to be threatened by fishery activities at present and has been assessed as Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Etymology Although the honor for this Catshark is not named, it is possibly in honor of fish paleontologist Charles Rochester Eastman (1868-1918). Taxonomy and phylogeny The first known specimen of the gecko catshark, a long female caught off the Izu Peninsula of Japan, was presented to American ichthyologists David Starr Jordan and John Otterbein Snyder by Alan Owston, a shipmaster from Yokohama. Jordan and Snyder described the species as Pristiurus eastmani in a 1904 volume of the scientific journal Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. Later authors have recognized Pristiurus as a junior synonym of Galeus. A 2005 phylogenetic analysis, based on mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, found that this species, G. gracilis, and G. sauteri form a clade apart from G. melastomus and G. murinus. Distribution and habitat The range of the gecko catshark extends from southern Japan, where it occurs off the Shizuoka and Mie Prefectures of Honshu and the main islands of Shikoku and Kyushu, to the East China Sea including Taiwan. It is extremely abundant in Japanese waters. Further records from off Vietnam may be erroneous. This species is found in water deep, on or close to the sea floor. It seems to exhibit strong spatial segregation by sex. Description Attaining , possibly in length, the gecko catshark has a slim, firm body and a fairly short head that comprises less than one-fifth of the total length. The snout is flattened with a blunt tip. The nostrils are large and divided by triangular flaps of skin on their anterior rims. The eyes are large and horizontally oval, with