Little Pink Fish

[dwashbur]

We found this little fellow at Wharf #2 in Monterey on our final dive, which happened to be a night dive. He was really fun to watch, because he kept trying to find an opening in all that red bryozoan to hide in. He was maybe 3" long, and has us thoroughly stumped. The only possibility we can find in Humann's book is the Showy Snailfish, Liparis pulchellus (p. 140-141), but there's a big problem: the tail doesn't match. As you can see in the photos, this guy's dorsal and anal fins meet at his back end like the pulchellus, but his tail doesn't stop there. It keeps going into a distinctive tail that he can fan out or close up; the photos attempt to show it both ways. I thought it might be the Liparis mucosus, the Slimy Snailfish, mentioned by Humann as a similar species, but the pix we've been able to find of those don't have the obvious stripes that this guy has. So we have no clue, unless he's a cross-breed between those two varieties of snailfish?!?!?!

[nwscubamom]

Very cool find! I would totally vote for a Slimy Snailfish (Liparis mucosus).

Fits exactly the description and drawing in Hart's Pacific Fishes book. I mean EXACTLY - down to the tail and markings.

Note: Hart says sometimes these are found without pattern and color is extremely variable.

- Janna

[dwashbur]

You mean I gotta buy ANOTHER book????? Awwwww, shucky darn Humann doesn't even have a picture, just lists it in passing while talking about the other snailfish. Thanks, Janna!

[nwscubamom]

You know it's funny...when I first started the ID stuff, I HAD to have books with pictures in them. Now I swear some of the most informative books and my favorites do not have photos - just drawings. (or mostly drawings with small section of photos, like Andy Lamb's Coastal Fish)

The Hart book is OLDY MOLDY, but a classic. Had to find a used copy on Amazon. It's a huge fat text, hardcover. If you can track one down, BUY IT if you're really into the fish ID stuff.

Humann's book is missing a few fishies (but they all miss a few - that's why you get a ton of books - what one is missing, the other ones hopefully have!) and also has a few errors in it about ID markings and such. But that will hopefully change once the new edition comes out!

- Janna

[dwashbur]

Well, I wonder if the moldy oldy book can help with a bunch of rockfish that we encountered, all on the same dive. I've got no less than 7 shots at the location below of rockfish that we can't ID with the books we have. We found at least 2 or 3 varieties that were new to us that we were able to ID, including black-and-yellow, gopher, and kelp, but these guys elude our best efforts. It's the first several pix, named rockfish1.jpg, rockfish2.jpg, etc. Everybody feel free to give it a try:

s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb133/dwashbur/breakwater%201-21-08-2/?start=20

Or I could post all the pictures

[Greg Jensen]

I second Janna's i.d. on the snailfish, and the recommendation for Hart's book. The newer printings are paperback, which tend to cost less. If you go on Amazon and type in "Pacific fishes of Canada" you can find hard and softcover versions for as little as 10-15 bucks.
Nice thing about a book like this is that it includes everything known to have ever been caught in BC at the time it was published- even if it was only one specimen. So if you find something that wasn't that isn't in the book, you know you've got something special.
Thanks for taking lots of pics of the snailfish so all the features are visible- it makes a positive id so much easier. Since it doesn't cost anything to fire off some additional digital photos, fire away when there's any doubt about what you're seeing.

[John Rawlings]

I would urge anyone that is really into critter identification to take Janna and Greg's advice and find a copy of Pacific Fishes of Canada. Black and white drawings can be challenging sometimes, but they also tend to show EXACT minute differences between similar species.

My hardback copy (1973) was one that I originally bought my Dad (who was an avid fisherman) and it eventually came back to me.

- John