Base coloration greyish with blue-green sheen on back; covered with large, round dark spots. Head, including predorsal area, covered with brown to dark orange, smaller round spots, usually lighter in colour and more reddish than blotches on body. Five to six large, dark brown or brown-purple to black midlateral blotches. Dark blotches above midline smaller than midlateral blotches.

In the SCUBA surveys there were six occurrences of this species from depths of between 8 and 32 m within caves, with four occurrences on soft sediment bottoms and two on rock (see Table 1). An additional single record from the ROV surveys was from a depth of 117 m on a rocky bottom having a thin layer of silt (Table 1 and Fig. 2). No cave or rock fissure or any other similar feature was present in the vicinity of this individual. Given that the literature indicates that T. ephippiatus is typical of cave habitats, crevices, overhangs or deep gullies (Bussotti and Guidetti 2009; Bussotti et al. 2015; Ragkousis et al. 2021; Kovačić et al. 2022), the occurrence of this species outside this type of habitat is unusual. Thorogobius ephippiatus is a new record for Maltese coastal waters; it is a NE Atlantic and Mediterranean species. In the Mediterranean its distribution appears to be mostly along the northern shores of both west and east basins including the Aegean Sea, Cyprus, and Israel (Kovačić et al. 2022). According to Froese and Pauly (2022), the depth range for T. ephippiatus is 6–40 m, with the fish being commonest in the 6–12 m range. The record from a depth of 117 m is therefore noteworthy, especially as the present authors are aware of only one previous deep-water record of this species, by Stern et al. (2018), who recorded it from a depth of 156 m off the north Israeli coast. Stern et al. (2018) attribute the deep-water occurrence of T. ephippiatus to its requirement for dark and cold conditions, which in the eastern Levantine Sea only occur in deep water. However, the species is present in shallow water in Cyprus (Gerovasileiou et al. 2017), which raises doubts about this hypothesis. On the other hand, the present deep-water record from Malta confirms that T. ephippiatus has a much wider bathymetric range than previously thought. It may be significant that both the Maltese and Israeli deep-water records were from open rocky bottoms and not from caves, suggesting that the association with caves in shallow water is due to the fish’s requirement for a dark habitat, while in deep water the species can occur in the open. In fact, Kovačić (1997) had already noted that this species occurs deep within caves in very shallow waters, but closer to the mouth at the deeper end of the depth range studied by this author (32 m). It therefore also occurs outside of caves in deeper water.

Figure 1. 

Photograph of Thorogobius ephippiatus, taken on 27 June 2016 at a depth of 24 m within a cave (36°04.879′N, 014°14.110′E). Photograph: OCEANA/Carlos Minguell^© LIFE BaĦAR for N2K.

Figure 2. 

Image grab from ROV footage collected on 7 July 2016 at a depth of 117 m (36°00.776′N, 014°50.517′E) showing an individual of Thorogobius ephippiatus. Image: OCEANA^© LIFE BaĦAR for N2K.

Body highly elongated. Snout rounded, slightly projecting beyond tip of lower jaw. Anterior nostril tubular, located near tip of snout. Eyes well developed. Pectoral and pelvic fins absent; dorsal and anal fins confluent with caudal fin. Body distinctly bicoloured, with grey-brown dorsal region and cream-white ventral section; in head region boundary between two-colour bands located at lower edge of pupil.

Figure 3. 

Image grab from ROV footage collected on 26 June 2016 at a depth of 458 m, (35°32.060′N, 014°13.220′E) showing an individual of Chlopsis bicolor. Image: OCEANA^© LIFE BaĦAR for N2K.

There were five occurrences of this species, all from the ROV surveys and within the 318–528 m depth range (Table 2). This newly recorded species appears to predominantly prefer rocky bottoms covered with a thin layer of muddy-detritic sediment. Froese and Pauly (2022) give a depth range of 80–365 m for C. bicolor, while Erguden and Bayhan (2015) recorded a single individual from a depth of 513 m from off Mersin Bay, Turkey, which is the same depth as the majority of our records (Table 2). This suggests that the species habitually occurs in waters that are deeper than previously reported. Chlopsis bicolor is native to the Mediterranean, where it is widely distributed and reported to occur on muddy bottoms (Froese and Pauly 2022). Our records show that the species also occurs on bottoms of muddy sediment intermixed with patches of hard substrata (Table 2).

Head not strongly depressed, eyes directed mainly laterally. No sharp spines at lower angle of preopercle. Opercle triangular, posterior edge angled and pointed only at upper edge. Snout blunt. Posterior angle of jaws ending behind vertical of eye posterior margin. Body and head uniformly dark brown.

A single individual of this species was recorded from the SCUBA surveys at a depth of 10 m within a cave (Fig. 4 and Table 3). Froese and Pauly (2022) give the depth range for this species as 5–30 m and indicate that G. ater is associated with reef habitats. The present record, as well as two other local records reported in social media¹, refer to this species as occurring within caves in shallow water. The occurrence of G. ater in the Maltese Islands has not been previously reported in the scientific literature. The majority of authors (e.g., Bussotti and Guidetti 2009; Bussotti et al. 2015) consider this species to be speleophilic, while Ragkousis et al. (2021) commented that it is only found in exclusively dark conditions. Froese and Pauly (2022) state that G. ater occurs in the eastern Atlantic, and from the Balearic Islands to the Adriatic in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, Ragkousis et al. (2021) note that its occurrence in the Azores Archipelago remains unconfirmed, while recent studies give records for this species from Crete and Cyprus. The distribution of G. ater, which is considered to be a Mediterranean endemic, has therefore been updated to extend from Spain to Cyprus, having been reported from 23 marine caves in Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, and Cyprus (Ragkousis et al. 2021), and from at least one cave in Malta (Table 3).

Figure 4. 

Image grab from ROV footage collected on 20 June 2016 at a depth of 10 m (36°01.106′N, 014°14.730′E) showing an individual of Grammonus ater. Image: Enrique Talledo/OCEANA^© LIFE BaĦAR for N2K.

Dorsal part of head reddish-brown with cream reticulations. Rest of body with three longitudinal brown bands (one dorsal and one dorsolateral band on either side) separated by thin, undulating cream stripe. Dorsolateral brown bands interrupted by thin cream stripes in the posterior region, breaking up into spots towards the caudal peduncle. Lower surfaces including head, ventral part of flank, and belly, all cream-coloured.

This species has recently been recorded from Malta by Tsagarakis et al. (2021), based on a single individual caught off west Gozo (coordinates: 36.00°N, 014.10°E) at a depth of 290 m. Bello (2018) gives another record as “W of Malta (ANDALORO et al. 2011)” but this online article (Anonymous, not dated) does not include details of the record apart from a point on a map. From this map, it appears that the fish originated from waters some 75 km west of the island of Gozo. Two individuals of G. granti (Fig. 4) were recorded from the presently reported ROV surveys, one in 2015 and one in 2016, which antedate the record by Tsagarakis et al. (2021). Both individuals occurred on a muddy bottom with rocky outcrops, one at a depth of 748 m and the other at 871 m. Froese and Pauly (2022) give the typical depth range for G. granti as 20–250 m but there are many Mediterranean records of this fish from deeper waters (e.g., Orsi-Relini and Relini 2014; Bello 2018; Spinelli and Castriota 2019; Tsagarakis et al. 2021). However, the depth of the presently reported findings (748 m and 871 m, Table 3) far exceeds almost all previous Mediterranean depth reports, and the 871 m depth is substantially greater than the deepest known record for the species, from the Galician Bank (Atlantic), where this species occurred at 823 m (Bañón et al. 2002). Gaidropsarus granti is native to the eastern and central Atlantic and its first record (cf. Bello 2018) from the Mediterranean in 1995 (Zachariou-Mamalinga 1999) sparked a debate as to whether it is an overlooked native or an Atlantic species that had recently expanded its range. The species’ status in the Mediterranean is best given as cryptogenic, although the prevailing opinion is that it is an Atlantic range-expanding species (Orsi-Relini and Relini 2014; Bello 2018).

The present note adds knowledge to the fish faunal diversity of the Maltese Islands: Thorogobius ephippiatus and Chlopsis bicolor are new records for Malta; Grammonus ater has not yet been reported from Malta in the scientific literature; and Gaidropsarus granti has only been reported once from close to the Maltese islands in the published literature. In addition, the present findings include the deepest records of G. granti and C. bicolor, and the second deepest record of T. ephippiatus for the entire Mediterranean Sea.

Figure 5. 

Image grab from ROV footage collected on 23 June 2015 at a depth of 871 m (35°52.880′N, 014°07.351′E) showing an individual of Gaidropsarus granti. Image: OCEANA © LIFE BaĦAR for N2K.