The New Zealand giant sawbelly (''Hoplostethus melanopeza'') is a

slimehead Slimeheads, also known as roughies and redfish, are mostly small, exceptionally long-lived, deep-sea beryciform fish constituting the family Trachichthyidae (derived from the Greek ''trachys'' – "rough" and ''ichthys'' – "fish"). Found in tem ...

of the

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

Beryciformes The Beryciformes are a poorly-understood order of carnivorous ray-finned fishes consisting of 7 families, 30 genera, and 161 species. They feed on small fish and invertebrates. Beyond this, little is known about the biology of most member speci ...

. It is native to the South Pacific, more specifically the sub-tropical and temperate latitudes of the Tasman and South Fiji basins. It is also found along

Australia's Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by a ...

southeastern coast, the

Bay of Plenty The Bay of Plenty ( mi, Te Moana-a-Toi) is a region of New Zealand, situated around a bight of the same name in the northern coast of the North Island. The bight stretches 260 km from the Coromandel Peninsula in the west to Cape Runawa ...

, and southern

Kermadec Ridge The Tonga-Kermadec Ridge is an oceanic ridge in the south-west Pacific Ocean underlying the Tonga- Kermadec island arc. It is the most linear, fastest converging, and most seismically active subduction boundary on Earth, and consequently has the ...

at the north end of

New Zealand's New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country b ...

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

. It can reach sizes of up to SL. Its natural habitats are "continental slopes, seamounts, and submarine rises" between , though it has been found as shallow as and as deep as . The first ''H. melanopeza'' caught were thought to be individuals of the '' H. gigas'' species, and it was not distinguished as a separate species until much later. One key difference between the two is that although both are red, ''H. melanopeza'' has black fin margins.

References

External links

* Hoplostethus Fish of the Pacific Ocean Marine fish of Eastern Australia Marine fish of New Zealand Fish described in 2012 {{Beryciformes-stub