The Little Gulper Shark is taken as both targeted and incidental catch across its range in mid-water and demersal trawl, surface and demersal longline, and setnet fisheries.

Where targeted fishing occurs, fishing activity has been intensive. In the Philippines, deep-water dogfish fisheries (Centrophorus spp and Squalus spp), dating back to the 1960s, are known for their boom-and-bust nature and collapse over short periods of time (~10 years) before effort is shifted into new regions (Flores 2004).

In India, fisheries employing a number of gear types (trawl, longline, gill net, hook and line) have expanded further offshore into deeper waters as inshore stocks become heavily exploited. A targeted gulper shark liver oil fishery (operating at depths of >300–1,000 m) commenced in 2002, and between 2002–2008, there was a major increase in landings of deep-water sharks (see Akhilesh et al. 2011, 2013, Akhilesh and Ganga 2013). Targeting fishing has also occurred off the Andaman Islands and Sri Lanka since the 1980s (Soundararajan and Roy 2004, A. Tanna pers. comm. 21/11/2019). Reports of large quantities of shark liver oil recently transported out of Somalia may be indicative of developing fisheries in this region (K.K. Bineesh unpubl. data 2019).

In the Northeast Atlantic, this species was previously reported in small quantities in Portuguese longline fisheries (ICES-WGEF 2018). It is reported in bottom longlines and trammel nets throughout the Mediterranean (Guallart 1998, Massutí and Moranta 2003, Lteif et al. 2017). Despite a number of management measures to reduce deep-water shark fishing mortality, deep-water sharks are still captured in demersal fisheries (e.g. Fauconnet et al. 2019). Discard mortality is unknown, but presumed to be high (Rodríguez-Cabello and Sánchez 2017) and the extent of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is unknown (ICES-WGEF 2018).

Between 1950–1998, there was an apparent increase in reported landings