Squirrel Hake

• Its pelvic fins have turned into two tactile filaments it trails over the bottom like a blind person's canes to locate buried prey.
• The juveniles shelter inside the mantle cavity of the sea scallop Placopecten magellanicus, a curious case of association between a fish and a mollusc.
• The juveniles live inside living scallops. They slip into the mantle cavity of the Atlantic sea scallop and spend their first months there, protected from predators.
• Its pelvic fins are reduced to two long, sensitive filaments that it trails along the bottom and uses to locate prey by touch, not for swimming.
• It is fast-growing and short-lived compared with other gadids, which makes its population respond quickly to fishing.
• It is caught mainly as bycatch alongside other bottom-dwelling species of the north-west Atlantic.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bony fish)

Habitat and environment

Soft bottoms of the north-western Atlantic, between 30 and 600 m

Sources consulted: FishBase (Froese & Pauly, eds.) · Lista Roja de la UICN · NOAA Fisheries · Steimle et al., Essential Fish Habitat Source Documents