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Fish

Red gurnard

Chelidonichthys cuculus

Chelidonichthys cuculus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Triglidae WoRMS 127259

Reference photos

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Red with pinkish-silver mottling, a large angular head and steep snout, and a bony extension running from below the eye to the preopercle. The last two or three pectoral rays are free and enlarged, used for food detection, and the pectoral fins open and close like a bird's wing. The lateral-line scales are plate-like, expanded vertically. A caught fish croaks like a frog.

Depth

15-400 m, usually 30-250 m

Size

Maximum 50-70 cm; common length 27.6 cm, females 20.4 cm

Habitat

Demersal, over sand, gravel, crag and rock on the continental shelf

Behaviour

Occasionally forms schools; feels for food with enlarged pectoral rays, and croaks like a frog when caught

Diet

I eat

  • Bottom-living crustaceans, including shrimps and prawns, crabs and amphipods
  • Bottom-dwelling fish such as sandeels, dragonets and gobies
  • Squid and cuttlefish, including bobtail squid and the common cuttlefish

Eats me

  • Anglerfish (monkfish), recorded taking red gurnard off Great Britain

Where you'd find it

Found all around Britain and Ireland, so you have a chance of seeing it anywhere on the coast.

ChannelCeltic SeaNorth SeaIrish SeaW of IrelandW of Scotland
Often seenWhere PEBL filmsBased on marine survey records (OBIS). Blank seas can mean nobody has looked there, not that the animal is absent.

Sources

Open-access references behind this page. Every statement on this page was read out of one of them; anything that could not be traced to a source was taken off the page rather than left standing. Each link was checked on the date shown, and confirmed then to be about this species.

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