Sebastes
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sebastes".

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Sebastes
Fossil range: Early Oligocene to Present1
Yelloweye rockfish, Sebastes ruberrimus
Yelloweye rockfish, Sebastes ruberrimus
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Scorpaeniformes
Family: Scorpaenidae
Genus: Sebastes
Cuvier, 1829
Species

See text.

Sebastes is a genus of fish in the scorpionfish family Scorpaenidae, most of which have the common name of Rockfish. Most of the world's 102 rockfish species live in the north Pacific, although one species lives in the South Pacific/Atlantic and 4 species live in the north Atlantic. The coast off South California is the area of highest rockfish diversity, with 56 species living in the Southern California Bight.

The fossil record of rockfish goes back to the Miocene, from California (although one fossil from the Belgium may put the record back as far as the Oligocene).

Rockfish range from the intertidal zone to almost 3000 m deep, usually living benthically on various substrates, often (as the name suggests) around rock outcrops. Some rockfish species are very long lived, amongst the longest living fish on earth, with a maximum reported age of 205 years for Sebastes aleutianus (Cailliet et al. 2001).

Rockfish are an important sport and commercial fish, and many species have been overfished, and seasons are tightly controlled in many areas.

Species

A gopher rockfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Greenspotted rockfish at the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
Starry rockfish.
Black rockfish.
A rockfish in the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Sebastes marinus at the New England Aquarium.
Blue rockfish at the Vancouver Aquarium.
China rockfish at the Vancouver Aquarium.
Sebastes pachycephalus.
Treefish.

References

  1. ^ Sepkoski, Jack (2002). "A compendium of fossil marine animal genera". Bulletins of American Paleontology 364: p.560, http://strata.ummp.lsa.umich.edu/jack/showgenera.php?taxon=611&rank=class. Retrieved on 25 December 2007. 
  • Milton S. Love, Mary Yoklavich, Lyman K. Thorsteinson, (2002), The Rockfishes of the Northeast Pacific, University of California Press
Works cited
  • Cailliet, G.M., Andrews, A.H., Burton, E.J., Watters, D.L., Kline, D.E., Ferry-Graham, L.A. (2001). "Age determination and validation studies of marine fishes: do deep-dwellers live longer?". Exp. Gerontol. 36: 739–764. doi:10.1016/S0531-5565(00)00239-4. 
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