Taiwan’s Penghu University of Science and Technology, in collaboration with National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology and the local fish education team “Year after Year with Saury” in Penghu, conducted a survey on the bycatch species of corvinas and bottom trawling fishing in the Penghu area. They unexpectedly recorded Taiwan’s first discovery of the Large-scaled Tonguefish, which has been accepted by an international journal and will be published soon.
Professor Lin Bao’an from Penghu University of Science and Technology (Penghu Tech) led the University Social Responsibility (USR) program “Living with the Sea – Resource Utilization of Penghu Bycatch and Marine Fish Education Plan”. He collaborated with Professor He Xuanqing’s research team from National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology’s aquaculture department, as well as the local fish education team “Year after Year with Saury” to investigate the bycatch species of corvinas and bottom trawling fishing in Penghu. Over two hundred bycatch fish species have been documented so far, among which, besides some species awaiting confirmation, the first discovery of the Large-scaled Tonguefish in Taiwan has been recorded.
Penghu Tech pointed out that the Large-scaled Tonguefish belongs to the Paralichthyidae family, first described in the Indian Ocean in 1908, with subsequent records in Japan and the Philippines, but never in Taiwan. This project sampled bycatch from the Dingkang area’s corvina fishery, discovering four flatfish samples that had never been found before. After comparing literature and discussing with Japanese scholars, it was confirmed as Taiwan’s first record of the Large-scaled Tonguefish.
Over the past decade, Professor He Xuanqing has collaborated with Japanese scholars to study flatfish species in Taiwan, describing three new species and several new records for Taiwan. This time in Penghu, they collected ten flatfish species, highlighting Taiwan’s rich diversity of flatfish. Through collaboration with the local team “Year after Year with Saury”, regular expeditions were conducted to collect samples. Initially during collection, several unique specimens with orange spots on their cheeks were observed, judged to be previously unseen. The article documenting this new record has been accepted by the international journal Zootaxa and will be published soon.
Penghu Tech noted that the main features of the Large-scaled Tonguefish include numerous orange spots on the blind side of the male fish’s cheeks, two dark stripes between the eyes, and white circular spots on the eye side. The four collected samples included three males and one female, all individuals less than 6 centimeters in size.