Queenfish
species of fish

The queenfish (Seriphus politus) is a species of fish in the family Sciaenidae, the drums and croakers. It is native to the eastern Pacific Ocean, where it occurs along the North American coastline from Oregon to Baja California; it has been recorded as far north as British Columbia. Its centre of distribution is the Southern California Bight. It is also known commonly as the queen croaker. This is the only extant species in the monotypic genus Seriphus. A fossil relative, S. lavenbergi, is known from the Late Miocene-aged Puente Formation of the Los Angeles Basin.
Description
This species is up to 30 centimetres (12 in) long. It has an elongated, compressed body. It is blue-grey to tan in colour with a shiny silver belly and a dark horizontal line running the length of the body. The pectoral fin is dark and the other fins are yellowish.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Queenfish” is species of fish. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Queenfish, species and fish, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Queenfish” 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.