Spottedtail Goosefish, Lophiodes caulinaris
Spottedtail Goosefish, Lophiodes caulinaris. Fish provided by the commercial fishermen of the greater Los Cabos area, Baja California Sur, August 2008. Length: 37 cm (14.5 inches).
The Spottedtail Goosefish, Lophiodes caulinaris, is a member of the Goosefish or Lophiidae Family, and is known in Mexico as rape rabo manchado. Globally, there are fifteen species in the genus Lophiodes, of which three are found in Mexican waters, one in the Atlantic and two in the Pacific Ocean.
The Spottedtail Goosefish has a body that is wide at the front and tapers toward the back. They are mottled brown in color with the caudal fin being dark brown with a ventral row of white spots across the middle; the outer half of the pectoral fins is black with a narrow white margin. They have a very large broad flattened head with a large wide mouth that bears long, sharp, recurved teeth. The eyes are on top, the top jaw is protractile and the lower jaw is projecting. The first dorsal spine, located at the tip of the snout just above the mouth, has been modified into an angling apparatus (illicium) that bears a pennant-like lure (esca) that is used to attract prey. The gill openings extend from in front of to behind the pectoral fin base. They have 2 other isolated standalone dorsal spines, connected by a membrane, located above the pectoral fins, and a separate spinous dorsal fin, located well back in the body, with 3 spines. The pectoral fins are somewhat unique being long and “arm-like” bony structures. They have smooth skin and are scaleless.
The Spottedtail Goosefish is found over and within sandy and mud bottoms at depths between 15 m (50 feet) and 381 m (1,250 feet). They reach a maximum of 44.5 cm (17.5 inches) in length. They are “lie in wait” ambush predators, feeding on small fishes and crustaceans. The Spottedtail Goosefish is poorly studied with very limited information available about their lifestyle and behavioral patterns including specific details on age, growth, longevity, movement patterns, diet, habitat use, and reproduction.
The Spottedtail Goosefish is a resident of all Mexican waters of the Pacific Ocean.
The Spottedtail Goosefish is an easy fish to identify and due to their body shape and the row of white spots on the base of its tail for which it is named. They are however, similar to the elusive Threadfin Goosefish, Lophiodes spilurus (lure bulb-like; second and third dorsal spines are black).
From a conservation perspective the Spottedtail Goosefish is currently considered to be of Least Concern with stable, widely distributed populations. They are rarely seen by humans and too bony to be of interest to most. They are caught at a modest level by deep water trawlers and are a “catch-and-release.” I have provide a couple of these to one of the major countries within the European Community in 2012 and they used my fish to establish as a protocol for the DNA. The DNA profile for the goosefishes included a total of seven global Goosefish that will be implemented to assist in the apprehension of fraudulent bad guys who are replacing “valuable fish high-cost fish with trash fish” and reaping big profits (Lorenze Castigliego, et al., Food Chemistry, 166, 1-9 (2015). Or, who knows, they might become (ho ho) the next Patagonia Toothfish aka Chilean Seabass.