Risks to deepwater chondrichthyans (sharks, rays and chimaeras) from fishing are poorly understood, particularly in areas beyond national jurisdiction. We adapted Productivity-Susceptibility Analysis (PSA) and Sustainability Assessment for Fishing Effects (SAFE) to assess the vulnerability of 112 deepwater chondrichthyans to various demersal fishing gears in the Southern Indian. 15 species were categorised as being at high or extreme vulnerability for bottom fisheries and three of them have high ecological risk for all four bottom fisheries, including some species that are reported to be commercially targeted by the Spanish longline fishery. There was good concurrence between PSA and SAFE results for species categorised as being at high or extreme vulnerability by the SAFE, but as expected there was an overall greater number assessed to be at higher vulnerability using PSA due to its precautionary nature. Our results indicate that running PSA and SAFE assessments concurrently provides more useful information than single assessments as it allows for better identification of potential false positives and false negatives. Our findings indicate that better catch, effort and biological information is needed to inform assessment and management of deepwater chondrichthyans that have potential high ecological risk in the southern Indian Ocean.