Funny Flounder

OK folks, another mystery fish from St. Vincent for you!

I have dived in St. Vincent for almost 7 years, and I have not seen anything like this before. We have LOADS of flounders here, mostly Peacock flounders and similar. This is the first time that I hve encountered a striped flounder. The other unusual feature that this fish displays are eyes that are very close set, when I originally found it I thought that it was an octopus buried in the sand.

This fish was found at around 25 - 35ft, and it has been living in the same area for around 2 months, however it's ability to become almost invisible makes it quite hard to find. It hates light and is very active at night. During the day it relies on camouflage believing it's self to be invisible.

Would like to know what it is, and it's range.

Flounder 1

Flounder 2

Flounder 3

Thanks!

Kay

It's hard to tell with all of the sand on it, but it could be a zebra sole. Gymnachirus nudus.

Cheers,

Marli

I'm not sure. Definitely not your normal flounder.

I am going to make a wild guess of Trichopsetta sp. I can not find any descriptions or photographs of any species in the genus. All I can find are diagrams, but in the diagrams, the eyes are rather close together.

http://images.google.com/images?q=Trichops...sa=N&tab=wi

Thanks for the info so far, however the Zebra sole is reported to be approx 2.5 inches long, however this one was the size of a dinner plate, I would guess about 12 / 14 inches in length, and about 8 to 9 inches across.

Also the very distinctive stripes run across the fish

Take a look at this family of flatfish - ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/009/y4162e/y4162e63.pdf

Eyes are on the right side, body shape is right, many species have stripes, and some have the fringe around the front margin

Looking at the pdf the fish mostly resembles the zebra sole, but the stripes don't look quite right, and it's a very long way from home! I think that I'll send some shots to the REEF folks to ask their advice too!

Thanks Leslie, interesting reading, I'm learning lots of fish stuff!