Pleurogrammus monopterygius

Pleurogrammus monopterygius (Pallas, 1810).

Atka Mackerel or Northern Atka Mackerel. To at least 54 cm (21.3 in) TL (Robert Lauth, pers. comm to M.L.). Sea of Japan (Antonenko et al. 2003) and Sea of Okhotsk (Chereshnev and Nazarkin 2004) to Commander–Aleutian chain, and northern Bering Sea (Mecklenburg et al. 2002) to Bering Strait (Mecklenburg et al. 2011) to Redondo Beach, southern California (Eschmeyer and Herald 1983); rare in eastern North Pacific south of Alaska (Mecklenburg et al. 2002). Depth: lower intertidal to 720 m (2,362 ft) (Hoff and Britt 2003). However, this latter is a record from a trawl-caught fish that might have been taken in midwater. Following Mecklenburg and Eschmeyer (2003), we treat Pleurogrammus azonus Jordan & Metz, 1913, a western Pacific form sometimes classified as a junior synonym of P. monopterygius (e.g., Nelson 1994, Mecklenburg et al. 2002), as a distinct species with common name Southern Atka Mackerel or Arabesque Greenling. Molecular evidence recently presented by Crow et al. (2004) supports the existence of two distinct species.