Kodiak's Irish Lords

Recently we talked about what the snorkelers saw at Mill Bay. One of those was a "sculpin". Basically, I think people call any weird fish a sculpin, and they include both salt and fresh water fish. That is why they have scientific names, so they are classified more specifically. Some of ours are among the ugliest fish! They belong to the family Cottoidei, in which there are 300 species. That's a lot of ugly fish!

In any case, we have what some call the Irish Lord, and others just lump as a "sculpin".

These Irish Lords are all over the place. In Spanish they call them "Cabezon", the big headed one. One day that is all we caught as we tried to do some halibut fishing.

They have big heads, buggy eyes, and large spiny fins that will cut your hands when you try to take out the hook form their mouths.

But, I have to say: their body's colors are beautiful (if you can ignore their heads). Here is a Plain Jane green Hemilepidotus hemilepidotus.





The day we kept catching them we saw their spots vary from orange, to yellow, to red and even blue! Truly beautiful colors!

They are not good to eat. Most of their body is the head and belly. Only thin strips of meat along the side. Too much work for so little meat, they say locally.






If you want to see more underwater Kodiak life, go to an old You Tube of mine (just click the forward arrow on the picture below). The first 2 pics are of a really ugly and colorless guy. But the other long one is really quite beautiful, dispite it's ugglinesss.




These are all pictures I took in Kodiak. But, enough fish stories for now.

Remember: there is cool (or gross ?) stuff all around you. Just get out and look for it!