Atlantic wreckfish

The Atlantic wreckfish (Polyprion americanus), also known as the stone bass or bass groper (among other names), is a marine, bathydemersal, and oceanodromous ray-finned fish in the family Polyprionidae. It has a worldwide, if disjunct, distribution in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Habitat

Adult Atlantic wreckfish occur in and around caves, over rocky substrates and areas with densely scattered boulders, natural reefs and shipwrecks, a habitat which has led to species' common name. The adults are deep water fishes which have been recorded at depths between 200 and 600 feet (61 and 183 m). Some adults have been observed at depths approaching 500 meters in the Mediterranean.

It is normally a solitary species but the adults gather to breed during the summer. The juveniles form shoals for protection from predators which swim and hunt small fish in mid-water. Once they attain a length of 50–75 centimetres (20–30 in) they become solitary and look for a territory on the bottom. It is thought that the Atlantic wreckfish can live for as much as ninety years. They feed mainly on bottom-dwelling fish, squid and cuttlefish, but they will also take crustaceans and octopuses. They are probably best described as opportunistic, with one record of a ROV-camera filming a large congregation of small sharks feeding on a dead swordfish, with one of them being caught and swallowed whole by this species of wreckfish.

They have no known predators as adults, but juvenile specimens may be threatened by large bony fishes or sharks.

Distribution

The Atlantic wreckfish has a disjunct worldwide distribution. It is found in the eastern Atlantic Ocean from Norway to South Africa, into the Mediterranean and including the Macaronesian Islands and Tristan da Cunha. In the western Atlantic it is found from Newfoundland to Argentina. In the western Indian Ocean it occurs around Île Saint-Paul and Île Amsterdam and in the southwestern Pacific Ocean it is found around New Zealand. It is also found off southern Australia from just north of Perth, Western Australia to Fraser Island in Queensland, including Tasmania.