This past week was devoted to the August fish seining in South Slough. Since I already spent one blog post describing the process (http://wp.me/p64Blw-1cd), I figured that for my blog post this week I would highlight some of the fish species that we have been encountering during the seining.

The Pacific staghorn sculpin (Leptocottus armatus) is commonly found in South Slough. It has spiky projection on its gill cover that it can raise when threatened. They also sometimes vibrate when threatened. Here’s a tiny staghorn sculpin:

And a bigger one:

Many different species of perch live in the South Slough, including Shiner perch (Cymatogaster agregata), White seaperch (Phanerodon furcatus), Walleye surfperch (Hyperprosopon argenteum), silver surfperch (Hyperprosopon ellipticum) and Pile perch (Rhacochilus vacca).

This week we caught a striped seaperch (Embiotoca lateralis):

We also get a few different species of flatfish (fish that live on the seafloor and swim on their side, with both eyes on one side of their body). English sole (Parophrys vetulus) are most common, but there are also Speckled sanddab (Citharichthys stigmaeus), and starry flounder (Platichthys stellatus). We got a huge starry flounder this week, which was really unusual.

A tiny English sole:

And a starry flounder:

We also caught a bay pipefish (Syngnathus leptorhynchus). Bay pipefish live in eelgrass beds, and their bodies mimic a strand of eelgrass. Pipefish are related to seahorses, and the males incubate the eggs, just like seahorses.

Juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) also appear pretty frequently. There are both wild Chinook and hatchery-raised Chinook. We can tell wild-born from hatchery-raised Chinook from the adipose fin (a small fin behind the dorsal fin): hatchery Chinook have their adipose fin clipped, while wild Chinook do not.

It’s been so much fun seining and learning about the different fish in the South Slough this summer. I’m going to miss it!