Allosmerus elongatus

Allosmerus elongatus (Ayres, 1854).

Whitebait Smelt. To 22.9 cm (9 in) TL (Miller and Lea 1972). Vancouver Island, British Columbia (Pietsch and Orr 2019) to southern California (34°24’N) (Bradburn et al. 2011). Eschmeyer and Herald also list a questionable record from San Pedro, southern California. Depth: shallow water to 495 m (1,624 ft) (min.: Pietsch and Orr 2019; max.: NWFSC-FRAM). Although the maximum depth record comes from a bottom trawl catch, thus raising the question of whether that fish entered the net in the midwater during deployment and retrieval, we note that there are many bottom trawl catch records from between 300 (984 ft) and 495 m in the DFO and NWFSC-FRAM databases. Thus the maximum depth record of 495 m seems reasonable. An “ Allosmerus elongatus ” from Bristol Bay, Alaska (Personal communication: University of Washington, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture Fish Collection, Seattle, Washington) is an Osmerus sp. (Katherine Maslenikov).