Blue butterfish

Blue butterfish
	Blue butterfish ( Stromateus fiatola )
Systematics
	Spinefish (Acanthopterygii)
	Perch relatives (Percomorphaceae)
Order :	Scombriformes
Family :	Medusa fish (Stromateidae)
Genre :	Stromateus
Type :	Blue butterfish
Scientific name
	Stromateus fiatola
	Linnaeus , 1758

The blue butterfish or cover fish ( Stromateus fiatola ), model of the family of cover (or medusa) fish named after it in the order of the Scombriformes , is a typical inhabitant of the high seas, which are not too far from the coast. It lives in the upper, still transparent sea area above the continental shelf (epi- and bathypelagic) at depths of up to 70 meters. The species is fished to a small extent with bottom trawls and longlines. Two other very similar species live on the southern Atlantic and southern Pacific coasts of South America.

features

The fish is usually around 35, rarely up to 50 centimeters long. It is dark, silvery, on the back brown to blue-black with darker spots. Its sides are lighter, and in young animals there are some dark cross-bands. The dorsal and anal fins have no hard rays and 43 to 50 and 33–38 soft rays, respectively. The pectoral fins are black in young animals, the pelvic fins are small (they are completely absent in the adult fish).

Way of life

The fish lives in schools and spawns near the coast; egg development takes place in free water. The fry seek connection to jellyfish, in whose protection they grow up. The food initially consists of zooplankton , then small fish, crustaceans, salps and jellyfish.

distribution

The species lives in non-tropical waters of the east Atlantic from the south coast of England and Ireland (but it is rare up to the Biscay) to the Cape of Good Hope, also around the Canary Islands and Azores; furthermore in the western and northern Mediterranean to the Aegean Sea.

swell

Blue Butterfish on Fishbase.org (English)
Wolfgang Schneider: Field Guide to the commercial marine resources of the gulf of Guinea . FAO, Rome 1990, p. 120 (English, ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/008/t0438e/T0438E28.pdf 120 [PDF]).

comment

↑ Etymology: The name (στρωματεύς) means "carpet" (from stroma "blanket"), but already in ancient Greek (at Athenaios ) also a colorful, flat fish (Pape, Greek Wb. 1880); According to Pierre Belon, fiatola was the Roman name of a colorful Mediterranean fish in 1555 - whether it is the cover fish remains uncertain (cf. John Johnston , Hist. nat. de piscibus, 1650, tab. 19, 8). When Francis Willughby asked about the fish in Rome around 1635, it already had a different name.

[1] Etymology: The name (στρωματεύς) means "carpet" (from stroma "blanket"), but already in ancient Greek (at Athenaios ) also a colorful, flat fish (Pape, Greek Wb. 1880); According to Pierre Belon, fiatola was the Roman name of a colorful Mediterranean fish in 1555 - whether it is the cover fish remains uncertain (cf. John Johnston , Hist. nat. de piscibus, 1650, tab. 19, 8). When Francis Willughby asked about the fish in Rome around 1635, it already had a different name.