Endangered
Shortspine thornyhead
Sebastolobus alascanus
Shortspine thornyhead is sometimes referred to as the "idiot fish" or "idiot cod" due to its large oversized head and eyes.
Appearance
The dorsal fin has 15 to 17 spines and 8 to 9 soft rays and the anal fin has 3 spines and 4 to 5 soft rays. The general color of this fish is bright red with varying amounts of black on the fins and a pale-colored gill chamber.
The shortspine thornyhead has a large head with a strong spiny ridge, and an elongate, tapering body that grows to a maximum length of 80 cm (31 in).
Range and habitat
The shortspine thornyhead is found in the North Pacific Ocean from the Sea of Okhotsk north as far as the Navarin Canyon in the Bering Sea and from Stalemate Bank and Ulm Plateau in the Aleutian Islands east and south to Cedros Island in Baja California. It is a demersal fish with a depth range that is between 17 and 1,600 m (56 and 5,249 ft) but it is more usually found at depths less than 100 metres (330 ft). It is found in the northern and northeastern Pacific Ocean.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
Shortspine thornyhead 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 Shortspine thornyhead, Wikidata item Q2908215. 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.
