Black dogfish to the clade formed by the granular dogfish ("C. granulatum") and combtooth dogfish ("C. nigrum"). The black dogfish is a common species, with a wide but discontinuous distribution in the temperate waters of the Atlantic Ocean; its range abuts, but does not extend into, the Arctic Ocean. In the northeast, it occurs from Iceland to Sierra Leone, including the Faroe Islands, southern Norway, and the Rockall Trough and Porcupine Seabight off Ireland. In the northwest, it is found from southern Greenland and Baffin Island to Virginia, being particularly abundant in the Laurentian Channel, and may occur further south to the
Rockall on its proximity to the Irish mainland, however the country has never formally claimed sovereignty over the rock. Although Rockall is closer to the UK coast than to the Irish coast, Ireland does not recognise the UK's territorial claim to Rockall, "which would be the basis for a claim to a 12-mile territorial sea". Ireland regards Rockall as irrelevant when determining the boundaries of the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) as the rock is uninhabitable and in signing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1997, the UK has agreed that "Rocks which cannot sustain human