''Lethotremus muticus'', also known as the docked snailfish (a somewhat misleading name as this species is not one of the true snailfish in the family

Liparidae The Liparidae, commonly known as snailfish or sea snails, are a family of marine scorpaeniform fishes. Widely distributed from the Arctic to Antarctic Oceans, including the oceans in between, the snailfish family contains more than 30 genera ...

), is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

of lumpfish native to the Northeast Pacific. It is known from the

Bering Sea The Bering Sea (, ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth: Eurasia and The Ameri ...

and the

Aleutian Islands The Aleutian Islands (; ; ale, Unangam Tanangin,”Land of the Aleuts", possibly from Chukchi language, Chukchi ''aliat'', "island"), also called the Aleut Islands or Aleutic Islands and known before 1867 as the Catherine Archipelago, are a cha ...

, where its range extends to Unimak Pass, and it occurs at a depth range of 58 to 330 m (190 to 1082 ft). It is a

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

species that reaches 11.5 cm (4.5 inches) in total length. It can be found on substrates of mud, rock, or gravel, and it is currently the only known species of ''

Lethotremus ''Lethotremus'' is a genus of lumpfishes native to the northern Pacific Ocean. Following a 2017 taxonomic review by Lee et al., the species ''Lethotremus awae'' was reclassified as a species of ''Eumicrotremus ''Eumicrotremus'' is a genus of ...

'', following a reclassification of the second described species in the genus as ''

Eumicrotremus awae ''Eumicrotremus awae'' is a species of lumpfish endemic to the Pacific coast of Honshu, Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, an ...

.''

References

Cyclopteridae Fish described in 1896 Fish of the North Pacific Taxa named by Charles Henry Gilbert {{Scorpaeniformes-stub