1 An annotated checklist of the chondrichthyans of South Africa 2 3 4 DAVID A. EBERT1, 2, 3, 6, SABINE P. WINTNER4 & PETER M. KYNE5 5 6 1 Pacific Shark Research Center, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, Moss Landing, 7 USA 8 2 South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Grahamstown, South Africa 9 3 Department of Ichthyology, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, USA 10 4 University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Life Sciences, Durban, South Africa 11 5 Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, 12 Darwin, Australia 13 14 6 Corresponding author: E-mail:
[email protected] 15 16 David A. Ebert ORCID ID 0000-0003-4604-8192 17 Sabine P. Wintner ORCID ID 0000-0001-7350-5999 18 Peter M. Kyne ORCID ID 0000-0003-4494-2625 19 20 21 1 1 Abstract 2 3 An annotated checklist of chondrichthyan fishes (sharks, batoids, and chimaeras) 4 occurring in South African waters is presented. The checklist is the result of decades of 5 research and on-going systematic revisions of the regional fauna. The chondrichthyan 6 fauna of South Africa is one of the richest in the world with 191 species, comprising 50 7 families and 103 genera. It consists of 30 families, 64 genera, and 111 species of sharks; 8 17 families, 36 genera, and 72 species of batoids; and, 3 families, 5 genera, and 8 species 9 of chimaeras. The most species-rich shark families are the whaler sharks Carcharhinidae 10 with 20 species followed by the deepwater catsharks Pentanchidae with 13 species.