Story last updated at 7/28/2010 - 12:11 pm
A rare fish was brought into Petersburg in early September 1954. The strange critter was taken by a Petersburg fisherman, Ernest Enge, who was fishing in Chatham Strait. Harold Gifford identified it as a prowfish. Gifford, a Canadian, happened to be in the Petersburg area on business for the International Halibut Commission.
The prowfish is a subtropical marine fish with the scientific name of zapora silenus. The first recorded prowfishes were collected in the Strait of Georgia in November of 1895. The fish measured under three feet and are preserved in the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. Moretta Frederick, a fish collections manager for that museum, answered my e-mail query. He tells us that several other specimens have been collected between 1895 and 1999. In total there are 15 specimens in the collection.
The Petersburg prowfish measured about two feet long and was grey in color with a blunt, rounded head with no apparent scales. The description is much like fish we see when we dive in Roatan. In fact, there is an unrelated prowfish in Australia.
On the head are numerous large sensory pores that look like dots. If I saw a strange fish, what would make me think it was a prowfish? It has a high blunt snout (not pointy like most fish), a long single dorsal fin (or top fin) that covers almost the length of the fish, and a shorter fin on the bottom side near the tail that is round. The body colors vary from gray to dark green.
Bill Heard, at NOAA's National Marine Fisheries lab in Juneau, reports that on its annual Southeast Coastal Monitoring surveys between 20 and 40 juvenile prowfish are routinely collected. Surface trawls are towed at fixed stations in Upper Chatham and Icy Straits.
"Juveniles are pelagic and are fairly common," he said. "However, we have never seen an adult."
On the Web, I learned that in over 40,000 research trawl catches taken throughout Alaskan waters southward to southern California, indications are that it is a North Pacific species. Prowfishes are frequently encountered in the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands at the edge of the continental shelf. These fish have also been caught along the coasts of Siberia all the way to northern Japan.
Most of us will never see an adult prowfish because they are a deepwater fish and spend most of their time near the bottom. One source says the fish will not go deeper than 675 meters, another says 801 meters. They generally are near the bottom at 100 to 250 meters (320 to 640 feet). Reportedly divers with ADF&G have seen them among bottom boulders near the two Cape Edgecumbe pinnacles at the entrance of Sitka Sound where they like to eat gelatinous zooplankton and jellyfish. They avoid skates and halibut that are their predators.
If you should catch a prowfish, they are edible with firm flesh and red color. I wonder if Mr. Enge ate his fish or if it is in a collection somewhere, or, most likely, if it was throw away.
Pat Roppel is the author of numerous books about mining, fishing, and man's use of the land. She lives in Wrangell.
