576 



Fishery Bulletin 98(3) 



side slightly less green than that of congeneric in Puget 

 Sound, often with faint yellow highlights around darker 

 spots near bases of dorsal and anal fins and at midline. 



Remaining description as for genus. Largest specimen 

 examined 340 mm (427.5 mm TL) (UW 040265 ). Maximum 

 size reported 588 mm (Fadeev. 1965) to 690 mm TL.^ 



Description of juveniles 



Individuals of about 20 mm collected in water column (one 

 19.0-mm individual examined, UW 083482, not completely 

 transformed; see comments); lateral line and pectoral-fin 

 rays undeveloped; body pigmentation increasing through- 

 out; bars and patches of postflexion larval pigmentation 

 pattern visible; urogenital papilla light or speckled with an 

 unpigmented tip. Eye length smaller, mouth larger, body 

 deeper, gill-raker counts on lower arch higher, distance 

 from pelvic-fin origin to anal-fin origin shorter, expanded 

 anteriormost anal-fin pterygiophore less developed (not 

 protruding beyond body wall in our material) than in sim- 

 ilar-size L. billneota. 



By 35 mm, many individuals collected near bottom. Post- 

 settlement juveniles (Fig. 22B) as developed as similar-size 

 L. bilineata: increased body pigmentation giving juveniles 

 a darker appearance (obscuring urogenital papillae pig- 

 ment), rays of paired and median fins formed, lateral line 

 formed, supraorbital pores present, expanded anteriormost 

 anal-fin pterygiophore strongly developed. 



Description of larvae 



Snout-to-anus length 32.1-39.37^ SL, remaining constant 

 during development; body depth 3.8-28.59;^ SL, increas- 

 ing with development, sharply increasing after flexion; 

 head length 11.6-26.7'7f SL, increasing with development; 

 snout length 22.8-24. 7'7r HL, remaining constant during 

 development; orbit length 51.8-20.9'7f HL, decreasing with 

 development (Table 2). Total myomeres 38-42. 



Larvae hatching at greater than 3.0 mm (3.6-4.0 mm, 

 Pertseva-Ostroumova. 1961); yolk absorbed by 3.3-4.2 mm. 

 Preflexion larvae ranging in size from 4.2 to 6.2 mm; flexion 

 larvae, 6.2-12.6 mm; postflexion larvae, 12.2-18.6 mm. Trans- 

 formation occurring at sizes as small as 15.0 mm; postsettle- 

 ment stage usually not complete by 20.0 mm I Table 13). 



Head pigment present initially along lower jaw and 

 underside of chin (Fig. 23); increasing with development 

 to snout, upper jaw, and isthmus. Pigment ventrally along 

 gut and dorsally on anus; by flexion a distinct patch of 

 melanophores along posterior edge of gut; pigment increas- 

 ing laterally with development. 



Postanal pigment light along the anal finfold, melano- 

 phores absent on dorsal finfold (Fig. 23); two pigment 

 patches along the dorsal midline, anterior patch beginning 

 about midbody at myomere 18-20, posterior patch begin- 

 ning about myomere 30, posterior patch aligning with a 

 ventral patch forming a postanal bar; series of melano- 

 phores along the ventral body midline beginning just pos- 

 terior to the anus, extending to just beyond the postanal 

 bar (about 2/3 body length); a few melanophores on caudal 

 peduncle and above and below the notochord tip. 



Distribution (Figs. 8, 11, 13, 24) 



Ranging from the northern coast of Hokkaido throughout 

 the Kuril Islands and the Okhotsk Sea of the western 

 North Pacific, through the Bering Sea, from the Gulf of 

 Anadyr^^ to off St. Lawrence Island (Allen and Smith, 

 1988), to Puget Sound, Washington, in the eastern North 

 Pacific. Large concentrations have been reported from the 

 west and southeast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, where it 

 once composed 90'7f of the fisheries catches of pleuronec- 

 tids (Shubnikov and Lisovenko, 1964), and from the south- 

 eastern Bering Sea. Minami and Nakamura (1978) also 

 reported a single specimen ofL. bilineata {=L. poly.xystra 

 n. sp. based on distribution) among many L. mochigarei 

 from Wakasa Bay, Japan (ca. 35.7°N, 135. 5°E); this speci- 

 men could not be located. ^^ Larvae have been collected 

 from Puget Sound, the east coast and northern tip of Van- 

 couver Island, Hecate Strait, and north along the coasts of 

 Alaska into the Bering Sea. According to Okiyama ( 1988), 

 larvae occur along the coast of the Kuril Islands, the coast 

 of Kamchatka, and into the Bering Sea. 



The recorded locality of one adult (CAS 19305) from San 

 Francisco Bay, over 1200 km south of the nearest verified 

 capture in Puget Sound, is questionable. Although no evi- 

 dence from catalog records** indicates that the specimen 

 had been misplaced, the specimen was collected in 1888 

 and has an original catalog number from the Indiana Uni- 

 versity collection. Its morphology and meristics are dis- 

 tinctively that of more northerly populations. 



Habitat 



Lepidopsetta collected in the eastern Bering Sea are most 

 commonly associated with sand, and least with "sand 

 and mud," when compared with all other measured sub- 

 strate types in the Bering Sea, including combinations 

 of sand, gravel, and mud.'"' The maximum depth of col- 

 lection was 246 m.^'^ During the 22-year ichthyoplankton 

 sampling period (all previously unidentified pleuronectid 

 lai^vae were re-examined, thus providing the only historic 

 distributional records for lai-vae of L. poly.xystra n. sp.), 

 larvae were common in spring surveys conducted in the 

 Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, when they first appear in 

 March collections; largest catches have been taken in May. 



'■'' Kessler, D. 1997. Personal commun. Under contract to 

 Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering Division, 

 Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Natl. Mar Fish. Sen,'., NOAA, 

 7600 Sand Point Way NE. Seattle. WA 98115. 



'* Saruwatari.T. 1997. Personal commun. Ocean Research Insti- 

 tute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. Shinohara, G. 1997. 

 Personal commun. Fish Section, Department of Zoology, 

 National Science Museum (Natural History). Huankunin-cho. 

 Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. Japan. 



''' McConnaughey, R. 1997. Personal commun. Resource Assess- 

 ment and Consei-vation Engineering Division, Alaska Fisheries 

 Science Center Natl. Mar Fish. Serv, NOAA. 7600 Sand Point 

 Way NE, Seattle, WA 9811.5. 



"' Resource Assessment and Consei-vation Engineering (RACE) 

 Division. 1998. Unpubl.datafrom the RACE database. Alas- 

 ka Fisheries Science Center, Natl. Mar Fish. Serv., NOAA, 7600 

 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle. WA 981 15. 



