Indian Soapfish

Indian Soapfish

Material examined

EBRC /ZSI/F 12836, 01 ex., 213 mm SL, Digha fish landing centre, Purba Medinipur, West Bengal, Ray and party, 28/iii/2018 .

Diagnostic characters

D: VIII+12; P: 15; A: III+8; V: I+5; C: 17; GR: 2+6; LL: 52. Medium size fish with oblong and compressed body. Mouth moderately large, lower jaw longer than upper jaw. Maxilla reach vertically up to the posterior margin of eyes. Villiform teeth present in jaws, vomer and palatine. Upper part of preopercle margin with 3 spines, subopercle and interopercle smooth; at the tip of the chin a fleshy flap present which length is almost similar to eye diameter; caudal fin rounded ( Figure 4 View Figure 4 ).

Colour

Body brownish with numerous dark-edged small white spots arranged in close set, forming reticulation present on head, body and fins; 5 black saddles on back, the first on nape, second on pre dorsal region, third on base of spinous part of dorsal fin, fourth on base of soft part of dorsal fin and the last anteriorly on caudal peduncle.

Distribution

Indian Ocean : Socotra, Seychelles, Réunion and Mauritius (Mascarenes) and Maldives east to Andaman Sea, western Indonesia, Sumatra and Java. From Indian coast this species is reported from Andaman and Nicobar Island ( Rajan and Sreeraj, 2015), Tamil Nadu ( Varghese et al., 2011) and Kerala ( Akhilesh et al., 2021). Present study reports this species first time from northern part of east coast of India as well as West Bengal.

Remarks

Pogonoperca ocellata and P. punctata were previously synonymised but after that Anderson et al., (1998); Randall and Schraml, (2010) considered those as two different species. However, P. ocellata possesses whitish spots on the body which are much smaller and dense in comparison to P. punctata ; further dense white markings also present in all fins of P. ocellata which are absent in case of P. punctata ( Anderson et al., 1998) .