This past week, one of our Facebook fans, James Sapp, posted a couple of pictures of fish that we could not identify. He caught them in salt/brackish water in Texas.
I sent the information and photos to Kevin Cunningham, our TPWD Angler Education representative for the Houston area and he was able to identify them for us.
The first one is an Inshore Lizardfish. Here’s the Wikipedia definition for this fish:
Inshore Lizardfish
The Inshore Lizardfish, Synodus foetens, inhabits the east coast of the Americas. They are a slender fish, growing to no more than 16 inches in length. The mouth is large and wide, the upper jaw extending beyond the eyes. The jaws contain many needle-like teeth, found as well as on the tongue and roof of the mouth. The snout is pointed. The dorsal body color is various shades of brown to olive, while the ventral color is typically yellow to white. Young fish have darkly mottled sides which fade as they mature.
Inshore Lizardfish are bottom-dwellers found over sand and mud in waters as deep as 15 fathoms (90 feet). They also inhabit inlet areas of the Indian River Lagoon.
This Lizardfish ranges from southern Massachusetts to Brazil, including the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, the West Indies, and Bermuda. However, they are rarely seen north of South Carolina.
The second fish was identified as a Violet Goby. Here’s the definition for that one:
Violet Goby
The Violet goby has a long, slender, eel-like body. Its dorsal and anal fins run almost the entire length of the body. The teeth are very sharp; however these are used for scraping algae off rocks, not fighting. When kept in good condition, dragon gobies develop an attractive, iridescent, silvery-blue metallic color with a gold blotch pattern. Violet gobies seen in pet stores are generally 3 to 5 inches (7.6–13 cm) long. In the wild, violet gobies can grow to 24 inches (61 cm) long. However, in captivity they seldom grow past 15 inches (38 cm). No external differences between the sexes are known, although males are more territorial at spawning times.
Violet gobies usually inhabit brackish swamps, streams, and estuaries with a muddy substrate. Violet gobies have very small eyes, and as such are primarily scavengers. Their key method of obtaining food is by scooping up mouthfuls of gravel and sorting edible material from the substrate, and then spitting out the substrate and swallowing the food particles. They also use their highly specialized teeth to scrape algae off of rocks.
According to Kevin, both species are naturally occurring, not invasive species.