FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



543 



mouths are oblique when closed, or even vertical. 

 Associated with their deep-water habitat their 

 bodies are noticeably soft and flabby. Their eyes 

 are very small; some appear to be blind. The 

 ceratioids, too, are unique among the vertebrates in 

 the fact that the males of many of them (including 

 those of the Gulf of Maine species) are dwarfs in 

 size as compared with the females, and live 

 parasitic, attached to the females by their heads. 

 They are oceanic as a group, living in the mid 

 depths, mostly from about 200 fathoms down to 

 perhaps 750 fathoms. And they are blackish in 

 color as are so many other pelagic fishes of that 

 same depth zone. One species has been taken in 

 the Gulf of Maine as a stray. 



Deep sea angler Ceratias holbolli Kr0yer 1844 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 2729 (young as 

 Mancalias uranoscopus Murray) ; p. 2730 (young as 

 Mancalias shufeldli [Gill]; Barbour and Bigelow, Proc. 

 New England Zool. Club, vol. 23, 1944, p. 16 (adult, as 

 Reganichthys giganteus, new genus and species) ; Clarke, 

 Discovery Rept., vol. 26, 1950, p. 1 (adult). 



Description. — This deep sea angler is so bizarre 

 in its appearance that there is no danger of con- 



fusing it with any other Gulf of Maine fish, unless 

 it were with some other member of its own family. 

 In the large female, the body is strongly flattened 

 sidewise; the eyes are very small and set high on 

 the head; and the mouth is nearly vertical when 

 it is closed. Perhaps their most striking external 

 feature is the very long and extremely slender 

 bristlelike spine or "tentacle," that is borne on 

 the top of the head. This is jointed about two- 

 thirds the way out along its length, and it ends 

 in a fleshly, pear-shaped swelling ("illicium"), the 

 tip of which is described as pierced by a small 

 pore. 95 The illicium is supposed to be luminous, 96 

 and it bears 2 to 4 short filaments. 97 This head- 

 tentacle corresponds to the whiplike head spine of 

 the goosefish, but is situated farther back, about 

 abreast of the eyes. It is interpreted as repre- 

 senting a vestige of the first dorsal fin. The basal 



" So described by Clarke (Discovery Rept., vol. 26, 1950, p. 9) for an Ant 

 arctic specimen; the pore is not visible on the specimen we have examined. 



» Dahlgren (Science, vol. 68, 1928, p. 65) describes the tip of the illicium of 

 an unnamed species of Ceratias as with an open gland in which light is pro- 

 duced by bacteria. 



*t Four in the Gulf of Maine specimen described by Barbour and Bigelow 

 (Proc. New England zool. club, vol. 33, 1944, p. 9) as Reganichtttys giganteus; 

 two (each bifid) in an Antarctic specimen described by Clarke. 



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Figure 288. — Deep-sea angler (Ceratias holbolli), adult 

 female (above) and parasitic male (right) that was 

 attached to her, off Mount Desert Rock. From Bar- 

 bour and Bigelow. 



