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Hippoglossoides elassodon

Flathead Sole
NS G5
Collection Details

Specimens

Photos

There are no photos available for this taxon yet.

Records

Taxonomic Hierarchy

Actinopterygii (Ray-finned Fishes) Pleuronectfiormes (Flatfishes) Pleuronectidae (Righteye Flounders) Hippoglossoides Hippoglossoides elassodon (Flathead Sole)

Description

This species account was compiled from FishBase (Froese, R. and D. Pauly. Editors. 2025. FishBase. World Wide Web electronic publication. www.fishbase.org, version 04/2025.) and processed using AI-assisted text extraction. It may contain errors in spelling, punctuation, or formatting. When citing, please reference the original source rather than this page. Learn more about our species accounts.

Characters

Body shape: short and / or deep. Dorsal origin over anterior part of upper eye. Caudal with small elongation in center. Pectorals rather large with rounded tips.

Distribution

North Pacific: Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk, and the Bering Sea along the western coast of America to Pt. Reyes, central California, USA.

Habitat Associations

Marine. demersal. depth range 0-1050 m.

Biology

Found on soft bottom (Ref. 2850). Adults usually below 180 m (Ref. 2850). Feed on clams, worms and crustaceans (Ref. 6885). Taken by shrimp and otter trawls (Ref. 6885).
Max length: 52.0 cm SL; max weight: 1560 g; max age: 27 years.
Reproductive mode: dioecism; fertilization: external; nonguarders (open water/substratum egg scatterers); parental care: none.
IUCN Red List Status: Least Concern (LC), assessed 2020-11-05. Resilience: Low (tm=1-3; Fec=72,000; tmax=27).

Commercial or Environmental Importance

Fisheries: commercial; gamefish.

References

Matarese, A.C., A.W. Kendall, D.M. Blood and M.V. Vinter (1989) Laboratory guide to early life history stages of Northeast Pacific fishes. NOAA Tech. Rep. NMFS 80:1-652.
Eschmeyer, W.N., E.S. Herald and H. Hammann (1983) A field guide to Pacific coast fishes of North America. Boston (MA, USA): Houghton Mifflin Company. xii+336 p.
Bykov, V.P. (1983) Marine Fishes: Chemical composition and processing properties. New Delhi: Amerind Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd. 322 p.
Allen, M.J. and G.B. Smith (1988) Atlas and zoogeography of common fishes in the Bering Sea and northeastern Pacific. NOAA Tech. Rep. NMFS 66, 151 p.
Hart, J.L. (1973) Pacific fishes of Canada. Bull. Fish. Res. Board Can. 180:740 p.
Yang, M.S. and M.W. Nelson (1999) Food habits of the commercially important groundfishes in the Gulf of Alaska in 1990, 1993, and 1996. NOAA Tech. Memo. NMFS-AFSC 112, 174 p.
Fadeev, N.S. (1971) Biology and fisheries of the Pacific Ocean flatfishes. Vladivostok, Dal'izdat, 100 p.
Patzner, R.A. (2008) Reproductive strategies of fish. pp. 311-350. In Rocha, M.J., A. Arukwe and B.G. Kapoor (eds). Fish reproduction: cytology, biology and ecology. Science Publisher, Inc. Oxford. 631 p.

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