Author: Reinhardt, 1831
Gymnacanthus tricuspis Reinhardt, 1831
Status in World Register of Marine Species:
Accepted name: Gymnocanthus tricuspis (Reinhardt, 1830) (updated 2009-06-25)
Diagnosis: nasal spine covered by thick skin, upper preopercular spine with 2-3 spinules at tip; inter-orbital space narrow, concave, edges without bony plates. Pectoral fins large, extending to anal fin origin and beyond. D X-XII + 14-17; A (15) 17-18 (19); P (17) 18-19 (21). Colour: back dark, flanks with dark blotches forming two blackishbrown bands, irregular line of dark spots below lateral line; belly light, yellowish in females, with roundish white spots in males; dorsal fin with light and dark stripes, caudal, anal and pectoral fins light, the last with a yellow tip and with 4-5 narrow transverse lines of dark spots. Size: to 30 cm SL, usually 11-20 cm.
Habitat: benthic, burrowing into sand and sand-mud bottoms at O-100 (240) m, with temperatures of —1.6 to 12.5 °C, mostly near or below O °C and salinities usually 32-35, sometimes as low as 16-30. Food: small benthic amphipods and polychaetes. Reproduction: spawns late autumn to winter; eggs demersal, about 2,000-35,000, diameter 2 mm; larvae pelagic.
Distribution: eastern coasts of Greenland to 77° N, Iceland, northern coast of Norway from Hammerfest to White Sea and throughout Barents Sea to Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Elsewhere, Arctic seas off Siberia and North America, southward to Maine and Bering Sea southward to Natalya Bay.
Eggs, larvae and young stages. Knipowitch, 1903b: 146 | Jensen, 1904a: 238, pl. XI (fig. 6) | Ehrenbaum, 1905: 61-65, fig. 25 | Koefoed, 1907, pl. LXXVII (fig. 1-3) | Johansen, 1912: 649-651, pl. XLVI (fig. 6-7) | Pertseva, 1939: 459 | Rass, 1941: 10, fig. 4 | Ponomareva, 1949: 196-197, fig. 7-8 | Rass, 1949: 12, 25, 29, 41-42, 58, fig. 18 | Andriashev, 1954: 371.
Otolishs (sagitta). No data.