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Fish

Tub gurnard

Chelidonichthys lucerna

Chelidonichthys lucerna (Linnaeus, 1758) · Triglidae WoRMS 127262

Reference photos

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The largest of the European gurnards, with a big head cased in bony plates and three separate finger-like rays below each pectoral fin that it rests on and feels for food with. The give-away is the pectoral fins, marked with brilliant peacock-blue spots and a blue outer rim.

Depth

Recorded from about 2 m down to 318 m, usually in shallow water of 2 to 20 m

Size

Up to 82.8 cm, the largest of the European gurnards; commonly 30 to 60 cm

Habitat

Demersal, on sand, muddy sand, mud or gravel seabeds

Behaviour

Rests on three free finger-like pectoral rays that act as legs and help it locate food on the soft bottom

Diet

I eat

  • Small bottom-living fish such as sandeels, gobies, dragonets and small flatfish
  • Bottom-living crustaceans, mainly shrimps, prawns and crabs
  • Molluscs and polychaete worms taken from the soft seabed

Eats me

  • Larger predatory fish, with the greater amberjack a recorded predator
  • Other tub gurnards, which are recorded taking their own kind

Where you'd find it

Found around most of Britain and Ireland, though less often in the waters west of Scotland.

ChannelCeltic SeaNorth SeaIrish SeaW of IrelandW of Scotland
Often seenNow and thenWhere 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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