New Records of Thirteen Cottoid and Blennioid Fishes 
for Southeastern Alaska 
Jay C Quast 1 
ABSTRACT: Three categories of new records for species of fish are reported: 
( 1 ) extensions of range eastward or southeastward from the Bering Sea or Gulf of 
Alaska — Hexagrammos octogrammus (Pallas), Artediellus pad ficus Gilbert, T rig- 
lops metopias Gilbert and Burke, Anisarchus medius (Reinhardt), and Lumpenus 
jabricii (Valenciennes) ; (2) extensions of range northwestward — Artedius harring- 
toni (Starks), Oligocottus snyderi Greeley, Scorpaenichthys marmoratus (Ayres), 
and Lipariscus nanus Gilbert; and (3) "fill-ins” for species already reported to the 
north and south of Southeastern Alaska — Artedius lateralis (Girard), Bothragonus 
swani (Steindachner), Chirolophus nugator (Jordan and Williams), and Scytalina 
cerdale Jordan and Gilbert. 
In this paper I bring together distributional 
data for species that have not previously been 
recorded from Alaska’s southeastern region. The 
specimens are from the fish collection of the 
U. S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Biological 
Laboratory, Auke Bay, Alaska, and have been 
obtained principally from activities of the labo- 
ratory and the Bureau’s Exploratory Fishing and 
Gear Research Base at Juneau. 
For present purposes, Southeastern Alaska is 
considered to lie between the latitudes of Skag- 
way to the north and Dixon Entrance to the 
south (Fig. 1). The region, an archipelago com- 
posed of marine fjords, has a roughly rectan- 
gular outline and is about 590 km long and 176 
km wide. 
The new records are of three types : ( 1 ) east- 
ward range extensions from the Gulf of Alaska 
or Bering Sea, (2) northwestward range exten- 
sions, primarily from British Columbia but also 
from as far south as Monterey, California, and 
(3) records that fill gaps for ranges that have 
been established northwest and southeast of 
Southeastern Alaska. 
Although charts of Southeastern Alaska de- 
pict the marine waters as continuous, four lines 
of evidence suggest that a partial faunal barrier 
divides the inside waters into northern and 
southern regions in the vicinity of Kuiu, Ku- 
1 U. S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Biological 
Laboratory, Auke Bay, Alaska 99821. Manuscript re- 
ceived January 8, 1968. 
preanof, and Mitkof islands (Fig. 1). First, j 
water temperatures are usually lower in the 
northern waters during all seasons than in the 
southern inside waters or along the outer coast 
of Southeastern Alaska. Second, five species of 
shallow-water fishes whose ranges extend into 
California — Squalus acanthias, Artedius harring- 
toni (records of Auke Bay Laboratory), Racho- 
chilus vacca, Embiotoca lateralis, and Cyma- 
togaster aggregata (Tarp, 1952) — have been 
collected in the inside waters south of the 
Kuiu-Mitkof region but are absent from collec- 
tions from the inside waters to the north. Third, 
north and south of the Kuiu-Mitkof vicinity, 
waters deeper than 10 meters are continuous 
only via the outer coast. Communication east of 
the coast is limited to three shallow channels: 
Dry Strait, which usually bares at low water; 
Wrangell Narrows, which shallows to about 8 
meters; and Keku Strait (Rocky Pass), which 
shallows to about 3 meters. Fourth, the net flow 
of surface waters in Frederick Sound, Chatham 
Strait, and Sumner Strait probably is seaward 
most of the year because rainfall in the region 
of the boundary and in the mountains to the 
eastward is heavy and occurs during all seasons. 
The rainfall probably creates a net surface flow 
away from the barrier area, thereby decreasing 
the opportunities for shallow-water species to 
reach the three restricted channels of communi- 
cation. 
The new eastward range extensions suggest 
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