Fish o' the Day - starry flounder

Introducing a new feature as I prepare for my Biology of' Fishes course this summer. Seemed appropriate to start out with a fish I know well (or, at least, used to know well). The starry flounder, Platichthys stellatus, is a common flatfish found around North Pacific coastlines. They reach lengths of almost 3 feet, and can weigh almost 20 pounds. The species epithet (and the common name) refers to the banded pattern of dorsal and anal fins. I first got to know starrys during a stint at Oregon State's School of Oceanography, and then later focused a portion of my PhD. work on the utilization of meiofaunal prey by post-larval Platichthys stellatus.

Although starrys belong to the Family Pleuronectidae, the right-eye flounders, they can actually occur in either right-eye or left-eye forms. For the unitiated, that's a reference to the side of the fish that actually faces upward - right-eye flounders lie on the bottom on their left side and their left eye migrates across the body during development. As adults starrys can be found in the coastal ocean, but they're more often associated with estuarine environments. We collected them in the Columbia River estuary when I was in Oregon. In Alaska, we collected the juveniles on intertidal mudflats in Auke Bay.