Largest of the angelsharks (Squatina squatina) common in the E North Atlantic and Mediterranean; length up to 1·8 m/6 ft; body shape intermediate between sharks and rays; head flattened, mouth anterior, gill openings lateral, pectoral fins very broad, tail slender; also called angelfish. (Family: Squatinidae.)
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Lophius americanus |
Monkfish is the common name of a number of different species of fish.
Most of the fish referred to as monkfish belong to the genus Lophius, in the anglerfish family Lophiidae. Monkfish is the most common English name for this genus in the NW Atlantic but goosefish is used as the equivalent term on the eastern coast of North America.
A second group of fish also known as monkfish are members of the genus Squatina, in the angel shark family Squatinidae.
The monkfish, also sometimes called fishing-frog, frog-fish, sea-devil is well known off the coasts of Great Britain and Europe generally, the grotesque shape of its body and its singular habits having attracted the attention of naturalists of all ages. To the North Sea fishermen this fish is known as the "monk," a name which more properly belongs to Rhina squatina, a fish allied to the skates. All round its head and also along the body the skin bears fringed appendages resembling short fronds of sea-weed, a structure which, combined with the extraordinary faculty of assimilating the colour of the body to its surroundings, assists this fish greatly in concealing itself in places which it selects on account of the abundance of prey. this "tentacle" is used as a lure to attract other fishes, which the monkfish then seizes with its enormous jaws, devouring them whole.
They are also characterised by (again, as with all anglerfish species) an enormously distensible stomach, which allows an individual monkfish to swallow prey fully as large as itself.
The term monkfish has also been used for a sea monster of the north-west Atlantic bearing a passing resemblance to a monk (also known as a sea monk).
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