542 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Figure 287. — Sargassum fish (Histrio pictus). Drawing by Louella E. Cable. 



tips of both the dorsal rays and the anal rays form 

 short fringes. The margin of the caudal fin is 

 almost straight. The skin feels smooth to the 

 touch; actually it is finely studded with minute 

 granulations, and it bears variously shaped fleshy 

 tags, as appears in the illustration (fig. 287) . 



Color. — Creamy white, the fins as well as the 

 head and body mottled with pale and dark brown. 

 The fleshy tags are yellowish. 



General range. — Tropical and subtropical, living 

 at the surface among floating seaweed; sometimes 

 drifting far northward with the Gulf Stream. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — A specimen 

 about 4% inches (12 cm.) long, that was picked up 



in a purse seine near the surface over the west 

 central part of Georges Bank, by the Schooner 

 Old Glory on September 15, 1930, 82 and a second 

 of 2% inches, taken off the southeast slope of 

 Georges Bank, by the sword fisherman Leonora C, 

 on June 15, 1937, are the only records of this fish 

 in the Gulf of Maine; the most northerly records, 

 in fact, for it for continental waters in this side 

 of the Atlantic. But it has been picked up from 

 time to time near Woods Hole. 83 Living, as they 

 usually do, among floating gulf weed (Sargassum), 

 it is not astonishing that sargassum fish should 

 drift in over the offshore banks, occasionally. 



THE DEEP SEA ANGLERS. FAMILY CERATIIDAE 



The members of this family fall with the 

 anglers and sargassum fishes in the pediculate 

 tribe. And the first dorsal spine bears a "bait" at 

 its tip (known technically as an "illicium") as it 

 does among the anglers. But the wristlike struc- 

 ture of the pectoral fins is not obvious in the deep 

 sea anglers. And the members of this family, as 

 well as those of several other families closely related 



> Reported by Firth, Bull. 61, Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 1931, p. 14. 



to them, 94 differ from the anglers and from the 

 sargassum fishes in lacking ventral fins. Their 

 bodies are somewhat flattened sidewise (not 

 dorso-ventrally as in the anglers); their dorsal 

 and anal fins are very short (3 to 5 rays); and 

 their central four caudal rays are branched. Their 



n For early records of It near Woods Hole, see Sumner, Osburn, and Cole, 

 Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., Vol. 31, Part 2, 1913, p. 774. 



« For a synopsis of the ceratioid fishes, a numerous race, see Regan and 

 Trewavas, Rept. 2, Danish Dana Eiped. (1928-1930), 1932, p. 48. 



