Endangered
Great northern tilefish
Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps
The great northern tilefish is a slow-growing and long-lived species that has four stages of life.
Appearance
The back of the fish is iridescent and blue-green in color, with many yellow and gold spots. The head color changes from a light blue to a pinkish mix during spawning season.
The great northern tilefish is the largest species of the family Malacanthidae. Male specimens can grow up to 112 cm (44 in) fork length (FL) and females to 100 cm (39 in) FL. Lengths at age suggest that males grow faster than females, but the observed ages showed that females live longer.
Range and habitat
The species is abundant in the United States territorial waters of the Atlantic Ocean extending north into Nantucket Shoals and Georges Bank and moving south along the East Coast of the United States and into the Gulf of Mexico along the continental shelf. Although great northern tilefish are reported to be most abundant between 300 and 480 feet (91 and 146 m) deep at 76 °F (24 °C), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report differs, by stating that the species lives at the bottom of the ocean where they burrow into the sediment, between 250 and 1,500 feet (76 and 457 m) deep where the temperature ranges from 49 to 58 °F (9 to 14 °C). Due to their long life expectancy, slow growth, complex breeding system, and habitat specificity, they are vulnerable to overexploitation, and they are susceptible to mass mortality events due to cold-water intrusion and overfishing.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
The great northern tilefish is not a migratory fish. It stays in one local area that fits its needs all year round. Seasonal migration may occur with changes in the water temperatures around the Nantucket Shoals and Georges Bank during the winter or spring, but this theory has no definitive evidence.
The lifecycle of the great northern tilefish begins as an egg, that is nonadhesive and buoyant. The fish spawn during the early spring to the late fall, from March to November.
In crisis
As they grow into juveniles, the individuals seek shelter until finding or making their own burrows. Regulations include catch limits and gear restrictions to prevent damage to the species' habitat and population. The result of these regulations has been a rebounding of the population, that led to an increase in the 2012 catch limit in the southern part of the Atlantic seaboard.
Decline in age, size during sexual maturity in great northern tilefish population is occurring throughout the continental shelf. In the mid-Atlantic Bight, smaller sizes and younger ages at maturity were observed in 2008, compared to the survey data from the 1980s where recorded measurements showed a larger population.
Great northern tilefish is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Great northern tilefish, Wikidata item Q198572. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
