A large specimen of a sea cockerel with a total length of 76 cm and a weight of 3.2 kg was caught in the area of the village. Sedovo (Donetsk People's Republic) in the Taganrog Bay on May 14.
This spectacular brightly colored fish is a common inhabitant of the Black Sea, sometimes in summer it is noted in the southern part of the Sea of Azov, but for the Taganrog Bay its discovery is an absolute phenomenon – this beautiful thermophilic fish has never been so far north before.
The natural habitat of the yellow eagle is the coastal waters of the northeastern Atlantic Ocean from Western Sahara in the south to Norway in the north. It is found in the Northern, Mediterranean, Marmara and Black Seas. As a typical marine fish, the trigla avoids waters with low salinity, which was the main obstacle to its spread in the desalinated Sea of Azov. However, now that the salinity of the Sea of Azov is breaking records, the natural freshwater barrier to the spread of trigla is disappearing.
Previously, the eagle appeared in the Sea of Azov only during its previous salinization in 1972-1979. This is reminiscent of the huge stuffed sea rooster that adorns the office of the Yeisk Fish Protection Inspectorate of the Azov-Black Sea Territorial Administration of Rosrybolovstvo.
Trigla always attracts the attention of fishermen with its unusual bright appearance. The large triangular head is covered with oblique plates with sharp processes and spikes above the eyes, on the back of the head. The gill caps also have sharp, barbed edges. The large terminal mouth gives out an ambush predator in the trigla – crabs, shrimps, fish and, less often, shellfish form the basis of the trigla's diet. There are enough small crab infestations of ritropanopaeuses and shrimps in the Sea of Azov to feed trigla. Also, a characteristic feature of the appearance of this fish are three downward-curved sharp bony rays at each pectoral fin, which, like legs, are used by a needle (three-needle) to support itself on the bottom and slowly "walk" along the bottom, which gives it a bottom inhabitant. But the main beauty of this fish is hidden in the folded long pectoral fins. When folded, they attract little attention. But when the eagle spreads its large pectoral fins, it is like opening the tail of a peacock. They are very brightly colored. The main field of the fin is deep blue or deep turquoise, bordered on the edges by a bright blue border, and in the center it is filled with bright blue, green and red spots. An extraordinary beauty!
It is wide at the head, the body tapers rapidly to the tail, is colored in brick-reddish tones with darker and more saturated spots, the sides are yellowish, sometimes bright yellow, which gave the species name to this fish.
In the Taganrog Bay, a specimen of a sea cockerel was mined far enough from the coast – at a distance of 12 km, at a depth of 3.5‒4 m. By the way, trigla meat is very tasty, especially boiled.
Sea dogs, greenfinches, Black Sea gobies, and now the sea cockerel — the number of Black Sea inhabitants recorded in the Sea of Azov and in its most desalinated area, Taganrog Bay, is constantly increasing. Modern climatic changes, climate warming and increasing salinity are increasingly turning the Sea of Azov into a huge Black Sea lagoon. Gradually, this trend is taking over the Taganrog Bay and its western part.
VNIRO Press Service
