Endangered
Weakfish
Cynoscion regalis
Weakfish, the Weakfish, is a marine ray-finned fish of the family Sciaenidae, the drums and croakers.
Appearance
The head and back of this fish are dark brown in color with a greenish tinge. The sides have a faint silvery hue with dusky specks, and the belly is white.
Ranging from 12-18 inches once fully matured, with some adults reaching well above this range at up to 3 feet and 18 lbs.
Range and habitat
A medium-large, slender, marine fish, it is found along the east coast of North America. It is found along the eastern coast of North America from Nova Scotia, Canada to northern Florida, where it is fished both commercially and recreationally. This species has become established in the Gulf of Cadiz in the eastern Atlantic.
This is where the vast majority of Weakfish breed, to maintain a healthy population of Weakfish these areas must be preserved.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Weakfish move toward their prey slowly and once upon them they attack aggressively with an open jaw (Chesapeake). Some examples of fish that prey on Weakfish include the bluefish, the striped bass, and the dusky shark (Chesapeake).
Weakfish are schooling fish, meaning that they spend a large majority of their time swimming together either trying to evade larger predators, or trying to feed more efficiently on prey. Weakfish mainly spawn from April to August.
In crisis
This introduced population was first noted in 2011 when a specimen misidentified as Cynoscion nebulosus was taken and there is now a well established population. Natural mortality of this species has increased since the mid 1990s from 0.16 to an average of 0.93 from 2007 to 2014 but the underlying cause is still unknown. Given the decline in SSB in excess of 60% over three generation lengths and the unknown driver of increasing natural mortality, this species is listed as Endangered A2b with an urgent need for additional research to determine the driver of increasing natural mortality.
Weakfish 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 Cynoscion regalis, Wikidata item Q136887. 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.
