Chlopsis bicolor Rafinesque, 1810

Borg, Joseph A., Evans, Julian, Knittweis, Leyla & Schembri, Patrick J., 2022, New and interesting records of marine fishes (Actinopterygii) from the Maltese Islands (central Mediterranean), Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria 52 (3), pp. 215-221 : 215

Chlopsis bicolor Rafinesque, 1810

Fig. 3

Diagnosis.

Body highly elongated. Snout rounded, slightly projecting beyond tip of lower jaw. Anterior nostril tubular, located near tip of snout. Eyes well developed. Pectoral and pelvic fins absent; dorsal and anal fins confluent with caudal fin. Body distinctly bicoloured, with grey-brown dorsal region and cream-white ventral section; in head region boundary between two-colour bands located at lower edge of pupil.

Remarks.

There were five occurrences of this species, all from the ROV surveys and within the 318-528 m depth range (Table 2 ). This newly recorded species appears to predominantly prefer rocky bottoms covered with a thin layer of muddy-detritic sediment. Froese and Pauly (2022) give a depth range of 80-365 m for C. bicolor , while Erguden and Bayhan (2015) recorded a single individual from a depth of 513 m from off Mersin Bay, Turkey, which is the same depth as the majority of our records (Table 2 ). This suggests that the species habitually occurs in waters that are deeper than previously reported. Chlopsis bicolor is native to the Mediterranean, where it is widely distributed and reported to occur on muddy bottoms ( Froese and Pauly 2022). Our records show that the species also occurs on bottoms of muddy sediment intermixed with patches of hard substrata (Table 2 ).

Figures

Figure 3. Image grab from ROV footage collected on 26 June 2016 at a depth of 458 m, (35 ° 32.060 ′ N, 014 ° 13.220 ′ E) showing an individual of Chlopsis bicolor. Image: OCEANA © LIFE BaĦAR for N 2 K.