Assistant Curator Natural History Andrew Stewart describes a recent specimen processed by the Fishes team – one of the more striking deep-water predators and relative to the barracouta (a.k.a. the Fisherman’s curse), a large oilfish called Ruvettus pretiosus. Read more
Recently our Fish Team processed some bycatch specimens that had been sent to us by MPI Scientific Observers. In one box were not one, but four specimens of a rare species of a frogmouth fish. Not only that, the biggest one was a world record.Read more
Around the world, gobies are a major component of the benthic fish fauna of coastal tropical and temperate seas and estuaries – except around New Zealand. Here, triplefins (family Tripterygiidae) have evolved 30 species which have radiated to fill almost every ecological niche more usually occupied by gobies elsewhere. ItRead more
A recent discovery has highlighted, yet again, just how poorly we know what lives around our coasts – some within sight of our major cities – especially among rocky reefs. Te Papa’s fish expert Andrew Stewart introduces us to the polkadot triplefin.Read more
Some of the fishes in our collection were collected over 100 years ago. Fish Collection Manager Andrew Stewart explains how these ‘time capsules of data’ are central in current research.Read more
Sunfishes (family Molidae) are large, distinctive, oceanic fishes found worldwide. Scientists generally agree there are two species of sunfish – the oceanic sunfish (Mola mola) and the bump-headed or short sunfish (Mola ramsayi). However, recent DNA analyses of sunfish samples collected and sequenced overseas has indicated the presence of aRead more
