Florida Fish Expert Tries To Save the Last Sawfish
Burgess serves as curator of the International Shark Attack File and also as keeper of the newly expanded National Sawfish Encounter Database, a repository of all known historical and current records of sawfish in the United States.
Distinguished by a long rostrum or "saw" that makes it a popular curio item and gives the fish its name, the sawfish has become a historical and cultural icon that is rapidly disappearing.
Sawfish once swam in bays, lagoons and rivers from New York to the Rio Grande, Burgess said. Today, the species' U.S. range has shrunk to the waters off south Florida. On April 1, 2003 the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service placed the smalltooth sawfish on the Endangered Species List, making it the first marine fish species to receive protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Two sub-species of sawfish exist - the smalltooth sawfish, Pristis pectinata, shares the western Atlantic and parts of the eastern Atlantic with the largetooth sawfish, P. perotteti.
