Copper rockfish
fish of the Sebastidae family
The copper rockfish (Sebastes caurinus), also known as the copper seaperch, chucklehead, or white belly rockfish, is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the subfamily Sebastinae, the rockfishes, part of the family Scorpaenidae. It is found in the eastern Pacific.
Taxonomy and etymology
The copper rockfish was originally described in 1844 by the Scottish naval surgeon, naturalist and Arctic explorer John Richardson with the type locality given as the Sitka, Alaska. Some authorities place this species in the subgenus Pteropodus. The specific name caurinus means "northwestern", an allusion to the type locality in Alaska.
Distribution and habitat
The copper rockfish is a relatively common rockfish of the Pacific coast. It is very widespread in its distribution, known from the very northern reaches of the Gulf of Alaska, to the Pacific side of the Baja California peninsula, north of Guerrero Negro. The copper rockfish is also very widely distributed in depth, from the subtidal shallows of about 10 to 183 metres (33 to 600 ft). It is a demersal fish which occurs in rocky areas with high relief.
Description
Copper rockfish are known to be highly variable in coloration, ranging from a dark reddish brown, with pale copper blotching along the sides, to a lighter pinkish brown with a yellowish white mottling on the flanks.
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This entry incorporates text from “Copper rockfish” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.