Strange fish I have seen

Ucluelet is a wonderful, wild place...surrounded on 3 sides by the sea, lashed by wind and rain that often falls sideways (or even up!)...you are never more than a few steps from adventure!


My job is pretty adventurous. At least, compared to some of my former jobs. I spend a lot of time on the docks, observing the fish that come up during commercial trawl offloads. I always have my trusty iphone with me, and although the picture quality isn't exactly what you would call archival, it does document some of the fishiness rather well. And I like fishiness!

Here are some of my favourites...

These are Opah, Lampris guttatus. These ones came up in a hake trawl. They were pretty beat up by the pump (the fish are pumped out of the boat by a big vacuum cleaner thing) and as you can see, the heads were almost torn off. Each  of the two were about 17 lbs. I tried to removed the otoliths, but they appeared almost gelatinous. I haven't had a chance to ask anyone about that, yet...

 This is a Prowfish. The scientific name is Zaprora silenus. 

Check out the amazing sensory organs around its eye in what appear to be logarithmic spirals! There is no lateral line in this fish. I'd speculate that these pores might be some sort of modified lateral line.

The jaws are small, and the teeth are ridged, like a bandsaw blade. Little is known about these guys, other than the smaller specimens eat mostly ctenophores and salps (read: jellyfish).

I found a tiny juvenile one at one point, and it is frozen at the office. I'll dig it out and post a photo once they remove the (hundreds of pounds of) tagged sablefish off the top of it.

A close up of the fascinating pores.

The crew at the offload plant commented (more than once) that it looked "like a lingcod with its face smashed in."

Lots of invertebrates come up in the trawls, too. I'd say this is evidence of hitting the bottom with the trawl, since I have a hard time imagining a Brown Box Crab swimming in the midwater zone. Try to imagine a Sherman Tank swimming midwater...

Lopholithoides foraminatus  is a pretty cool looking animal. It's not really visible in these photos, but there is a perfectly round hole between the claws and the first set of legs. It is formed by a half circle on each. I will get a photo close up of that if I get another chance...there's one in my freezer, so I'll dig that up later. 

This is a pretty common fish in the trawls. It comes up in most of the hake trawls as well as the groundfish. It's called an Arrowtooth Flounder, or around here, Turbot. It isn't actually turbot as most people (especially chefs) know it. It's horribly mushy even before you beat it up with the pump. I cannot imagine wanting to eat this stuff, but they retain it. There are comments on the mushiness all over the net. Trust me people, it didn't go bad. It was jello even before it died. 

I took a photo of this one because of the funky parasite growing out of its eye. 

This is another weird parasite. I really know nothing about critters like this. It was iridescent and attached (very firmly...I couldn't cut it out) to the rearmost gill arch and skull.

FYI, this is a Rougheye Rockfish (Sebastes aleutianis) which is a common bycatch species in the Canadian trawl fisheries. I haven't had an opportunity to try eating it...but (aside from that green turd parasite) it looks tasty.













Which is in direct contrast to this fish.
This was in the fish case at the Market on Millstream, near Victoria, BC.

Neither my wife, nor I could identify it in the case, which is why we took a picture. Upon reflection, it seems that is is a Pacific Ocean Perch (Sebastes alutus) that is so old that it has lost all colour. Positive identification came only when I spotted a POP that had been left on the floor in the corner of a fish plant for several days. Miraculously, the birds had not found it...and it looked just like this!




Some years squid are more common than others. I missed last year, when hordes of Humboldt Squid washed up on the beaches here, and many more were caught by the fishing industry. Sport fisherman enjoy catching them because they are epic fighters.
Because I missed the Humboldts last year, I was delighted when this big boy came up at one plant.

That is me holding up the mantle (90 lbs +) as snapped by a crappy cellphone.

However, when I got around to identifying it properly, I discovered that it wasn't a ferocious Humboldt after all! It was a Giant Squid (even cooler!) and potentially could have grown much bigger than this! It is, in fact, the largest squid I have personally seen.

The species is Architeuthis dux. There is debate over the scientific classification, as there may be several species of Giant Squid but insufficient information exists. This could be any one of those, but for now they are all covered by the one name.

Not to say there aren't other large squid. This is a trio of Red Squid from a hake trawl. --->

To be fair, I call them "red squid," but I've no idea of their taxonomic classification. They could be 3 seperate species...

 While I'm on invertebrates, my wife (who does similar work) emailed me this picture from one of her offloads. She wanted to know if they were "sea slugs."

Rather than nudibranchs, these are in fact some kind of sea cucumber...which are echinoderms, related to starfish and sea urchins. I didn't get to examine these personally, so I cannot tell you which species they are.

Check out this funky dude! I actually had to get out my fish book for this one. I can't remember seeing one while diving, and while I knew it was some sort of poacher...I couldn't dredge it up from the inner recesses of my mind.

There isn't a lot of information on poachers, but I believe that is is a Blacktip Poacher, Xeneretmus latifrons.

I'm quite surprised I don't have better photos of this one. It is a shark (I love sharks) and I was pretty excited when it came up. I knew instantly that it was Apristurus brunneus, the Brown Catshark. It was more gelatinous than I thought it would be, which may be partially due to coming through the pump. However, all specimens I saw (there were a lot over about 4 weeks) were the same. I had a couple in my freezer for a week or two, but I guess I never got a good pic. Here's one of me examining the mouth, though.

This fish is a common sight for divers...but fishermen (commercial fishermen, at any rate) don't seem to know (or care) what this fish is. They are pretty uncommon in the trawl, which is why this Kelp Greenling (Hexagrammos decagrammus) appears here.

This next one was taken by my wife at a groundfish offload. I didn't get a good look at it, so I have to assume that it is a Black Eelpout, Lycodes diapterus.


You are welcome to contest my identification. There are several busloads of eelpout species, and they are NOT my strong point.

Here is another eelpout. This one I did have the chance to examine. It was pretty big, the biggest of about 8 that came up in this offload. I held it up to one of the plant workers (an old guy named T-pot who really really really knows his fish) and he said he had no idea. The comment was that it looked like a screwy Gray Cod (or Pacific Cod). It really did. Which helped me identify it as a Wattled Eelpout, Lycodes palearis.

Actually, I'm nowhere near sure on that identification, as I did not have a chance to count dorsal rays. Nor do I really know my eelpout species.

Any other opinions?

This last one is a real charmer.

I found it on the floor of the plant while bringing my wife some lunch. It has the consistency of that glow in the dark slime you get out of Zellers vending machines. 

My first thought was "Blobfish!" But no, the blobfish is a spectacularly blobby being, and this one isn't quite blobby enough to be the bloberific blobfish. I love saying blobfish.

 I photographed it with my little flashlight to get a sense of size.

When I showed this to my friend from Stellar Coffee, she exclaimed "It looks like a burn victim!"

Uh, yes.

Now we call it the Burn Victim Fish.

But it does have a scientific name, and I wish it were Victimus flammablis....


This little devil is a Pink Snailfish, Paraliparis rosaceus. 


That's all I have for now, but I'll post any others as they come up.