Sand Eel

Photo Ark

Sand Eel

Scientific Name Ophichthus gomesii

Photo Taken At Gulf Specimen Marine Lab And Aquarium, Panacea, Florida, USA

IUCN Red List Status Least Concern

Population

This species is common throughout most of its range (Smith-Vaniz and Bohlke 1991). It is the most common eel on Florida shrimp grounds in the Gulf of Mexico. Read More

Threats

There are no known major threats. It commonly occurs as bycatch in trawl fisheries in coastal U.S. waters from South Carolina into the northern Gulf of Mexico (Smith-Vaniz and Bohlke 1991). Read More

Region

gulf_of_mexico

Geographic Range

This species is distributed in the western Atlantic from Massachusetts south along the U.S. coast, Bermuda, the Bahamas, in the Gulf of Mexico from northwestern Cuba and the Florida Keys north along the Gulf coast and down to Campeche, Mexico, in the Caribbean Sea from Jamaica to Antigua, and along the Central and South American coast from Cozumel, Mexico to Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (R. Robertson pers. comm. 2014). Read More

Habitat

This species inhabits soft bottoms in bays and backwaters to offshore banks. Leptocephali are found off the coast of North Carolina at depths of 83-938 m (Ross et al. 2007). It is typically caught at night (Schobernd et al. 2011). Read More

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RECENTLY ADDED SPECIES

Carpenter, K.E. 2015. Ophichthus gomesii. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015: e.T191110A1970250. http://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2015-2.RLTS.T191110A1970250.en

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Sand Eel

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