Tetronarce occidentalis (Storer, 1843)

Jones, Christian M., Driggers Iii, William B., Hannan, Kristin M., Hoffmayer, Eric R., Jones, Lisa M. & Raredon, Sandra J., 2020, An annotated checklist of the chondrichthyan fishes inhabiting the northern Gulf of Mexico Part 1: Batoidea, Zootaxa 4803 (2), pp. 281-315 : 286

Tetronarce occidentalis (Storer, 1843) —western Atlantic torpedo

Synonyms:

Narcacion occidentale Gill, 1861

Torpedo occidentalis Storer, 1843

Distribution. Northeastern GOM from the shoreline out to an approximate depth of 560 m.

First Record in GOM. A report by Gowanloch (1932) appears to be the first to suggest that this species (reported as Torpedo nobiliana ) inhabits the northern GOM. Bigelow and Schroeder (1953) initially dismissed this report and suggested that it followed from what they considered to be erroneous reports of this species presence in Cuba ( Poey 1868) and the Florida Keys ( Fowler 1906). However, the capture of several specimens from the northern GOM between 1956 and 1958 caused them to revise this opinion ( Bigelow and Schroeder 1962).

Remarks. This species was synonymized with Torpedo nobiliana by Krefft and Stehmann (1973) but was recently resurrected by Last et al. (2016) based on unpublished molecular evidence.

Conservation Status. Data Deficient, when assessed globally as Tetronarce nobiliana