Mike Basehore and his friends did a little deep dropping for tilefish and rose bellies over the weekend. They did not expect to catch what they pulled from the deep. When I first saw this picture it reminded me of the anthias or fairy bass I used to sell in my saltwater aquarium shop. Problem was I never knew of an anthias species to come from eight hundred feet of water and this far north.
I spent a few hours searching online to ID this fish. Then I sent the picture to Dewayne Fox at Delaware State University and he forwarded it to his colleague, Dr. Tim Targett at the University of Delaware. Apparently my assumption was on point, but I had no idea there was a deep water anthias species. From Dewayne Fox, “Dr. Tim Targett (UD) helped me out on this one. My first impression was that it was a squirrelfish but after looking through the species in our area I came up blank. I then took another look at it and thought it reminded me of a deep water grouper (family Serranidae). I came up with the genus Anthias independently from Tim who later confirmed it was Anthias woodsi (Swallowtail Bass). Apparently pretty uncommon. Do you know if you buddy froze it and or kept it in some way? “
Unfortunately the fish was not frozen and if anyone ever catches one of these, the schools would like to have a specimen to publish an article describing its morphological characteristics, color, and size. This is an uncommon catch for our area, swallowtail bass usually are not seen farther north than South Carolina.
Fish On!!
Rich King