Sebastes glaucus

Sebastes glaucus
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Perciformes
Family: Scorpaenidae
Genus: Sebastes
Species:
S. glaucus
Binomial name
Sebastes glaucus
Synonyms[1]
  • Sebastodes glaucus (Hilgendorf, 1880)
  • Emmelas glaucus (Hilgendorf, 1880)

Sebastes glaucus, the gray rockfish or blue rockfish, is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the subfamily Sebastinae, the rockfishes, part of the family Scorpaenidae. This species is found in deep waters of the Northwest Pacific.

Taxonomy

Sebastes glaucus was first formally described in 1880 by the German zoologist and paleontologist Franz Martin Hilgendorf with the type locality given as Hokkaido in Japan.[2] Some authorities place this species in the monotypic subgenus Emmelas. The specific name glaucus means “hoary blue”, an allusion which Hilgendorf did not explain but which is thought to be a reference to the grey or blackish body colour.[3]

Description

Sebastes glaucus has a body which is dark grey with a yellow tiny, the yellow is most obvious on the fins. It has a large mouth with the maxilla reaching the rear edge of the orbit. There is a bulge between the eyes which do not bulge above the dorsal profile of the head and the only spines on the head are the nasal spines. There are 14 spines in the dorsal fin.[1] This species attains a maximum total length of 50 cm (20 in).[4]

Distribution, habitat and biology

Sebastes glaucus is found in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Here it occurs as far south as the Iwate Prefecture in Japan to the Sea of Okhotsk, in the northern Sea of Japan and in the Bering Sea.[4] There are a few records from the Aleutian Islands off Alaska.[1] This species is a demersal fish which is found at depths between 2 and 379 m (6 ft 7 in and 1,243 ft 5 in). Its biology is little known but like other rockfishes it is ovoviviparous.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b c James Wilder Orr and David Clarkston Baker (1996). "New North American Records of the Northeast Pacific Scorpaenids Adelosebastes latens and Sebastes glaucus" (PDF). Alaska Fishery Research Bulletin. 3 (2): 94–102.
  2. ^ Eschmeyer, William N.; Fricke, Ron & van der Laan, Richard (eds.). "Species in the genus Sebastes". Catalog of Fishes. California Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 14 November 2021.
  3. ^ Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara, eds. (22 May 2021). "Order Perciformes (Part 8): Suborder Scorpaenoidei: Families Sebastidae, Setarchidae and Neosebastidae". The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved 14 November 2021.
  4. ^ a b c Froese, Rainer; Pauly, Daniel (eds.). "Sebastes glaucus". FishBase. August 2021 version.