The shore rockling (''Gaidropsarus mediterraneus'') is a mottled brown, small, elongated fish. This eel-like fish has three

barbels In fish anatomy and turtle anatomy, a barbel is a slender, whiskerlike sensory organ near the mouth. Fish that have barbels include the catfish, the carp, the goatfish, the hagfish, the sturgeon, the zebrafish, the black dragonfish and s ...

on its head, with the second

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through c ...

and the anal fin running the length of most of its body. These fins may be viewed moving in a continuous wave motion. The shore rockling is often confused with the

five-bearded rockling The fivebeard rockling (''Ciliata mustela'') is a coastal ray-finned fish of the family Lotidae. the lings and rocklings. It is found in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. It is not a fish of any commercial importance. Description The fivebeard rocklin ...

(''Ciliata mustela'') and the larger

three-bearded rockling The three-bearded rockling (''Gaidropsarus vulgaris'') is found in European waters from the central Norwegian coast and the Faroe Islands, through the North Sea, and around the British Isles to the region around the western Mediterranean. They ca ...

(''Gaidropsarus vulgaris''), due to their similar colourings, shape, and

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

. As the name suggests, the main visual differences are the five-bearded rockling having five barbels around its mouth, whereas the three-bearded rockling has a significant redness to its brown colouring when compared to the shore rockling. Shore rocklings can also be eaten, as the flesh is also very tender. Shore rocklings live in rocks, feeding on both worms and

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean gro ...

s. They are distributed in the eastern Atlantic from the mid-Norwegian coast south to the

Straits of Gibraltar The Strait of Gibraltar ( ar, مضيق جبل طارق, Maḍīq Jabal Ṭāriq; es, Estrecho de Gibraltar, Archaic: Pillars of Hercules), also known as the Straits of Gibraltar, is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Medi ...

and into the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ...

, where it is found along the coasts of north-west Africa and southern Europe into the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, ...

References

External links

* * Gaidropsarus Fish of Europe Fish of the Atlantic Ocean Fish of the Mediterranean Sea Fish of the Black Sea Fish of the North Sea Fish described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Gadiformes-stub