Bony fish · Zeiformes · Caproidae

Boarfish

Capros aper

Least Concern

The species is abundant and widely distributed; it faces no significant short-term risk. See full glossary

The boarfish, a small fish with a very deep, compressed body of orange-red and a mouth it can shoot forwards like a tube. It forms enormous shoals along the edge of the continental shelf and feeds on small crustaceans it sucks in one by one.

Size

8 cm – 30 cm

Diet

Carnivore

Feeds mainly on other animals.

Social structure

Colony

Lives in large concentrations, often for breeding reasons.

Sighting difficulty

Easy

OceanCarnivore Colonial Fish Ocean

3countries 7parks

Fun facts

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.