Cuban dogfish and other Florida oddballs

[BenCantrell]

Got out on a friend's boat near Pompano Beach on Saturday and did some deep dropping. Ally and I were hoping to get our first golden tilefish, and we knew we'd have to wade through a bunch of the very abundant blackbelly rosefish to find them. They taste similar to scorpionfish.



We didn't find any golden tiles, but I picked up a new shark species from 790 ft down, a Cuban dogfish.
https://biogeodb.stri.si.edu/caribbean/en/thefishes/species/2711









We came in shallower to 400 ft to try for other species. Nothing new there, but I got a nice photo upgrade for blackline tilefish. These guys are very tasty, similar to ocean whitefish, but I think better.



Species fishing can get pretty weird. We found a small abandoned dinghy about 10 miles out that had some tiny fish in it.



We couldn't get them to bite on our micro gear, so eventually I netted them with the bait net to see what they were. There was a juvenile grey triggerfish and about a dozen freckled driftfish. I added the driftfish to my list of species to try for next time.





We also saw some man-o-war fish, which live under the tentacles of Portuguese man-o-wars, and a really crazy looking juvenile flying fish that was camouflaged under a piece of drifting sargassum seaweed. We might have to dedicate a full day to looking for pelagic micros on a good calm day.

[skrilla]

Will you ship the dingy?

[Latimeria]

Sweet fish Ben!  I love that little trigger and you said they were floating in the boat?

Hopefully you took the dingy home, as that's a good score as it looks like it's really good shape.

[jrodda]

Would have been something else to get a new species out of that dinghy. Cool stuff.

[BenCantrell]

Hopefully you took the dingy home, as that's a good score as it looks like it's really good shape.

Will you ship the dingy?

We left it out there. 

[vdisney]

As always, great pictures Ben...............