Abstract
While examining many specimens of fishes from the depth off the coasts of Hokkaido and its adjacent regions, the author has found some interesting species which have hitherto been little known or unrecorded from the waters of Hokkaido and northern Japan, as well as some others which require criticism from the ichthyological point of view. Here the author wishes to report his observations and gives some ichthyological annotations on them in following seric.s of this study. The materials for this study were chiefly obtained from the catches brought up by the bottom-twawl or “Kisen-sokobiki” from a depth about 150 to 1200 m, at the fishing grounds and landed on the harbors at Kushiro, Abashiri, Mombetsu of Kitami Prov., Wakkanai, Otaru, Muroran and Hakodate, etc. The majority of the materials were collected by the author himself from the spring of 1949 to the winter of 1952 at fish-markets, but some others were given to the author by the branches of the Hokkaido Fishery Experimental Station situated at the cities stated above. The specimens thus collected amount to over one thousand in number and contain about 190 species belonging to 130 genera and 41 families as far as the author has studied to this day.
In addition to the above mentioned materials, the specimens of several interesting species collected by Mr. T. HIKITA at various places in Hokkaido in many years were placed in the author's hand for a closer examinations, and also some imperfectly known fishes were given to him by Mr. H. Misu who spared them from his collections made in the depth of T the northern Japan Sea by the aid of a bottomtrawel net of the training vessel “Hokusei-maru” attached to the Faculty of Fisheries, Hokkaido University, from May to October in 1951.
In August 1952, HIKITA and Misu published their report on the deep-water fishes based upon the above stated Misu's collections.
But they have committed some -obvious mistakes in their identification of species. For instance, Myoxocephalus tuberculatus SOLDATOV & PAVLENKO in their report (p.35, pl. VI. fig. 4) is nothing but M. ochotensis of ScHMIDT. and Cyclolumpus asperrimus TANAKA (p.40, pl. VIII. fig. 1) is a species of the genus CyclolumPus birulai (Popov) as one can understand from their desdription and figure. So their report is in need of revision, and the author will freely give his opinion on the subject concerned in the present article.
In the following description of various parts of body in each species, the measurement is done as below:
The body length is measured from the tip of snout to the base of caudal fin; the length of head, from the tip of snout to the extreme posterior margin of opercular flap; the depth of body is indicated by the vertical breadth of the deepest part of body; the length of snout is represented by the length between the tip of snout and the extreme anterior margin of orbit; the length of maxillary is measured from the tip of upper lip to the posterior end of maxillary; the diamater of orbit is the horizontal distance between the opposite margins; the width of interorbital space is meant by the distance between the upper margins of eyes; the length of caudal peduncle is shown by the length between the base of hindmost anal ray, to the base of caudal fin; the depth of the same is the least vertical width of caudal peduncle; the length of each fin is represented by the length of its own longest ray.
The author wishes to express here his sincere gratitude to his teacher Mr. T. HIKITA and Prof. S. SAITO, for their kind guidance and valuable advices throughout the course of this work. He also wishes to thank Prof. J. TOKIDA for his correction of original manuscript. Further his thanks are due to Prof. S. SATO who has given him various advices as well as permission to use his library freely; and to the staff members of thkn-abstract=
