Description: Body elongate, slender, compressed posteriorly. Head conical, with the tip of the snout turned downwards. Colour black, brown or purplish grey. Scales are very elongate and regularly arranged in neat clusters, but absent from the head.
Global Distribution: Atlantic (but not in the Mediterranean), Indian and Eastern Pacific Oceans. View Map
Maturity: Off western Morocco (Merrett & Domanski 1985), ovarian maturation was initiated around 300 mm SL at perhaps 4 years of age.
Behavioural ecology:
Population structure & migrations: Larger individuals tend to inhabit deeper waters.
ECOLOGICAL FEATURES
Depth range: FishBase: 120 - 4800 m, usually 400 - 2200 m
Habitat: Bathydemersal. Found on the continental slope near the upper limit of abyssal zone. Epibenthic. Does not tolerate higher water temperatures.
Feeding habits: Feeds on fishes, cephalopods and crustaceans. Fish were the most common prey in the Moroccan coast and the Canary Islands (Merrett & Domanski 1985); off mainland Portugal and elsewhere in the Atlantic, crustaceans dominated the diet.
Trophic level: FishBase: 4.1
FISHERIES
Commercial interest: Not commercial.
Conservation status: Global: Least concern.
Europe: Least concern.
Nutritional information & food safety:
REFERENCES
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.
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
Merrett N.R., Domanski P.A. (1985) Observations on the Ecology of Deep-Sea Bottom-Living Fishes Collected off Northwest Africa: II. The Moroccan Slope (27°–34° N), with Special Reference to Synaphobranchus kaupi. Biological Oceanography, 3(4): 349-399.
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.
Pereira J.N., Simas A., Rosa A., Aranha A., Lino S., Constantino E., Monteiro V., Tariche O., Menezes G. (2012). Weight–length relationships for 27 demersal fish species caught off the Cape Verde archipelago (eastern North Atlantic). Journal of Applied Ichthyology, 28(1): 156-159.
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.
