Smalltooth sawfish
Smalltooth sawfish are extremely vulnerable to overexploitation because of their propensity for entanglement in nets, their restricted habitat, and low rate of population growth. The species is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN Red List. Historically it was found in 47 countries, but it has been extirpated from 16 and possibly extirpated from another 25, leaving only 6 countries where it certainly still survives. In terms of area this means that it certainly survives in only 19% of its historical range. It is the only sawfish that certainly still survives in the United States (the largetooth sawfish, "P. pristis", has likely been extirpated from this country), and it has been listed by the National Marine Fisheries Service as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 2003. It is estimated that the smalltooth sawfish population in the United States now equals less than 5% of the historical population in this country. In the United States it once occurred from Texas to New York (northern range as summer visitors), but today it is essentially limited to Florida. In the Everglades region of Florida the population is now stable and possibly slowly rising. Other countries where it certainly survives are the Bahamas, Cuba, Belize, Honduras and Sierra Leone, but whether it survives in the Western Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic coast of South America is unclear. The species is listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
Longcomb sawfish
A combination of characters are necessary to distinguish it from the other sawfish species: the longcomb sawfish has teeth to near the base of the rostrum or "saw" (unlike the knifetooth sawfish, "Anoxypristis cuspidata"), 23–37 teeth on each side of the rostrum (18–24 in the dwarf sawfish, "P. clavata", 20–32 in smalltooth sawfish, "P. pectinata", and 14–24 in largetooth sawfish, "P. pristis"), the teeth towards the tip of the rostrum are clearly closer to each other than those at its base (unlike the dwarf, smalltooth and largetooth sawfish where either equally spaced or only marginally closer to each other towards the tip of the rostrum), a relatively narrow rostrum, width equalling 9–17% of its length (typically wider in dwarf and largetooth sawfish), a rostrum that is 23–33% of the total length of the fish (20–25% in dwarf sawfish), relatively short pectoral fins (unlike the knifetooth and largetooth sawfish), a leading edge of the dorsal fin that is located clearly behind the leading edge of the pelvic fins (in front of in largetooth sawfish and roughly above in smalltooth sawfish) and it has a very small or no lower tail lobe (present in knifetooth and largetooth sawfish). It can be further separated from the two most similar species, the dwarf and smalltooth sawfish, by the considerably smaller maximum size of the former species, and the less greenish colour (when alive/recently dead) and essentially Atlantic distribution of the latter species. The smalltooth and longcomb sawfish might historically have come into contact in South Africa, but sawfish appear to have been extirpated from this country.