Description: Large, oblong, moderately compressed fish; body deep and robust. Large head, spiny and scaly, with a rough bony ridge across the upper part of the opercle, ending in a short spine. Scales are small and very rough. Brown or bluish-grey; lighter below; juveniles with irregular light and dark grey marblings which tend to disappear with age.
Global Distribution: Eastern and Western Atlantic; New Zealand; islands in the Western Indian Ocean. View Map
BIOLOGICAL FEATURES
Size: Maximum length 210 cm (total length); common length 80.0 cm (TL); maximum published weight 100.0 kg.
Depth range: FishBase: 40 - 600 m, usually 100 - 200 m.
Canary Islands (Brito et al. 2002): 117 - 800 m.
Habitat: Demersal. Adults prefer to inhabit caves and shipwrecks. Juveniles congregate under floating objects.
Feeding habits: Feeds on large crustaceans, cephalopods and benthic fishes.
Trophic level: FishBase: 4.1
FISHERIES
Commercial interest: Commercial species.
Conservation status: Global: Data defficient.
Europe: Near threatened.
Nutritional information & food safety:
Proximate composition per 100 g:
energy value 143.88 kcal (7.2% DRV)
protein 20.87 g (41.7% DRV)
fat 2.75 g (3.9% DRV)
of which saturates 0.75 g (3.8% DRV)
omega-3 (EPA+DHA): 0.781 g (recommended: 0.250 - 2.0 g daily)
REFERENCES
Brito A., Pascual P.J., Falcón J.M., Sancho A., González G. (2002). Peces de las islas Canarias. Catálogo comentado e ilustrado. Francisco Lemos Editor, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, 418 pp.
Carpenter K.E., ed. (2002). The living marine resources of the Western Central Atlantic. Volume 2: Bony fishes part 1 (Acipenseridae to Grammatidae). FAO Species Identification Guide for Fishery Purposes and American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists Special Publication No. 5. FAO, Rome, pp. 601-1374.
Direcção Regional de Pescas, Madeira.
Ferreira S., Sousa R., Delgado J., Carvalho D., Chada T. (2008). Weight-length relationships for demersal fish species caught off the Madeira archipelago (eastern-central Atlantic). Journal of Applied Ichthyology, 24: 93-95.
Hureau J.-C., ed. (1984-1985). Fishes of the North-Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean. UNESCO. Accessed through: Marine Species Identification Portal. World Wide Web electronic publication. http://species-identification.org (2014).
IUCN (2014). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2014.1. www.iucnredlist.org
Nieto A., Ralph G.M., Comeros-Raynal M.T., Kemp J., GarcÃa Criado M., Allen D.J., Dulvy N.K., Walls R.H.L., Russell B., Pollard D., GarcÃa S., Craig M., Collette B.B., Pollom R., Biscoito M., Labbish Chao N., Abella A., Afonso P., Ãlvarez H., Carpenter K.E., Clò S., Cook R., Costa M.J., Delgado J., Dureuil M., Ellis J.R., Farrell E.D., Fernandes P., Florin A-B., Fordham S., Fowle, S., Gil de Sola L., Gil Herrera J., Goodpaster A., Harvey M., Heessen H., Herler J., Jung A., Karmovskaya E., Keskin C., Knudsen S.W., Kobyliansky S., KovaÄić M., Lawson J.M., Lorance P., McCully Phillips S., Munroe T., Nedreaas K., Nielsen J., Papaconstantinou C., Polidoro B., Pollock C.M., Rijnsdorp A.D., Sayer C., Scott J., Serena F., Smith-Vaniz W.F., Soldo A., Stump E., Williams J.T. (2015). Europen Red List of Marine Fishes. IUCN and European Union, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 90 pp.
Rosa A., Menezes G., Melo O., Pinho M.R. (2006). Weight–length relationships of 33 demersal fish species from Azores archipelago. Fisheries Research, 80(2): 329-332.
