Great northern tilefish

Tilefish ( Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps )

The tilefish ( Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps ), and Blue Fish brick, tile fish or Blue tilefish, is a species of the subfamily of brick perches in quite a few kinds of comprehensive family of tilefish ( Malacanthidae ).

Features

It reaches 1.25 m in length and up to 30 kg in weight, these measurements apply only to males, females stay smaller. The animals reach an age of 35 years. It is characterized by a triangular flap of skin in front of the dorsal fin, which is larger in the male than in the female. The operculum is armed with a mandrel. At the corner of the mouth is ever a small Bartel. The coloring is quite colorful. The top of the head and the back are mottled brownish to purple and dark yellow scales; the sides are silvery, the fins yellowish to purple. The sides of the head are usually blue. The scales spines are quite large, thus the fish looks rough.

The fin formula is D VII-VIII/14-15, AI/13-14, P 16-18, VI / 5

Way of life

The species prefers sandy or muddy bottom at a depth of about 200 m, but occurs in a range from 20 to over 500 m depth. The animals inhabiting the North American continental shelf from Canada to the eastern Gulf of Mexico and live in small groups staple of invertebrates, particularly crustaceans and smaller fish. It seems that every fish is a living ( "sleep "? ) Cave digs. The preferred temperature is 8-17 ° C. Eggs are given distributed in small portions over months, up 200 000 per season and females and develop in the warmer months to pelagic spiny larvae.

Inventory and risk

1879 Before he was apparently completely unknown; In the following years he was longlining quickly became popular and was the fishermen of Nova Scotia to Pennsylvania soon well known, but disappeared in 1882 abruptly from the clutches. Apparently, an advance of the cold Labrador current had triggered a mass extinction, huge amounts of dead fish drove to the coasts. The recovery was slow and full of change; very often it was not. Nevertheless, he is a popular food fish and also fishing.

System

The Malacanthiden are poorly defined and are considered today as an artificial unit of Brachiostegidae and Latilidae. From Lopholatilus there to South America East Coast ( to Uruguay ) the related species L. villarii Miranda Ribeiro 1915, from which one does not know whether it is necessary to distinguish clearly chamaeleonticeps of L.; the assignment of animals from the Caribbean is unclear.