Boarfish

• Its mouth unfolds into a tube almost as long as its head to suck in copepods with millimetre precision.
• Its populations in the north-eastern Atlantic have multiplied spectacularly since the 1990s, a change linked to warming water that has made it one of the most abundant fish off western Ireland.
• Its mouth is extremely protrusible: it projects it forwards like a tube to suck in zooplankton, hence its pointed-snout profile.
• Its populations have exploded in the north-east Atlantic since the 1990s, an increase attributed to warming waters. It has gone from a marginal species to one of the most abundant on the European continental slope.
• That sudden abundance opened up an industrial fishery targeting it for fishmeal, above all in Irish waters.
• Its body is deep, strongly compressed and an intense orange-red, with large eyes adapted to the dim light of the continental slope.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (fish)

Habitat and environment

Slope and outer shelf bottoms, between 40 and 600 m

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (en): Capros

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.