Teresa Gaudette and
Vickie Web writes,
While fishing this summer my friends caught this unusual fish. We were in Chatham Strait. We have not seen anything like this before.
LEO says:
Atka mackerel (Pleurogrammus monopterygius) is a gregarious, semi-pelagic and semi-demersal hexagrammid that is distributed in the continental shelf regions across the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea from Asia to North America. On the Asian side, their distribution extends from the Kurile Islands to the Gulf of Anadyrskiy. From Kamchatka, they extend eastward through the Komandorskiye and Aleutian Islands, north to the Pribilof Islands in the eastern Bering Sea, and eastward through the Gulf of Alaska to southeast Alaska. Their center of abundance is in the central and western Aleutian archipelago where a directed commercial trawl fishery operates. Atka mackerel is a key prey item for marine fishes, birds, and mammals, including the endangered Steller sea lion. Learn more at ADF&G Species Profile.
Observations From Members