I remember when I came across my first lumpfish (or lumpsucker) while working on a trawler that was fishing out on Georges Bank. Before as a fisheries observer, I had been working exclusively on boats in the mid-Atlantic, but after some time, I volunteered to work on fishing vessels in the northeast. While working in the north, it was immediately apparent that the species composition found in the trawl nets up north was much different than I had observed down south—and the lumpfish was a species that I had never seen in southern waters.

The lumpfish are oddly shaped—like a ball—and these fish have strange looking tough feeling skin with rows of tubercles. Furthermore, they have a sucker visible underneath the ventral side that helps them attach to substrate. The roe of the Atlantic lumpsucker (Cyclopterus lumpus; see image above by Joe Kunkel) is a popular and “affordable alternative to the sometimes wildly expensive caviar produced by sturgeons.” C. lumpus is common in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean.

It seems like lumpfish are fairly smart too.

NewEnglandAquarium’s “Training Lumpfish Behaviors” video:

More lumpfish images:

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Photo source for attribution here, here, and here. The authors or licensors of these images do not endorse my work or me and their images are protected under an attribution license.

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