Small red scorpionfish
species of fish
Small red scorpionfish (Scorpaena notata) is a venomous scorpionfish, common in marine subtropical waters. It is widespread in the Eastern Atlantic from the Bay of Biscay to Senegal, Madeira, Azores and the Canary Islands, including the Mediterranean (rare in northern Adriatic) and the Black Sea.
Taxonomy
The small red scorpionfish was first formally described in 1810 by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque with the type locality given as Sicily. The specific name notata means "marked", an allusion to the large black spot on the spiny part of the dorsal fin.
Description
The small red scorpionfish has a maximum length of about 20 cm (8 in) but a more normal adult length is around 15 cm (6 in). The head is broad with a short snout and upwardly angled mouth. There is a short tentacle just above the eye and various other shorter tentacles, spines and flaps of skin decorating the head. The dorsal fin has twelve spines and nine soft rays and the anal fin has two spines and six soft rays. The pectoral fins are large and oval and have seventeen to nineteen rays. There are about forty-four vertical rows of scales on the body but the head, chest and the base of the pectoral fins are naked.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1746616. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1810.
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This entry incorporates text from “Small red scorpionfish” 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.