Heidi and Hans-Jürgen Koch

Atlantic Wolffish Skeleton, 2015

Photograph

Lifeform Photography
Goosefeld, Germany

This photograph features an Atlantic wolffish skeleton, Anarhichas lupus. The skull is about 28 centimeters long. This fish has a large head with fangs in the upper and lower jaws and has powerful molars. This fish feeds mainly on sea urchins, mussels, and crabs, crushing food with its powerful teeth. Because the Atlantic wolffish loses many teeth during its life, teeth grow again. It belongs to the order of the Perciformes and the family of the sea wolves (Anarhichadidae). It is a bony fish (Osteichthyes), and its skeleton is completely or partly ossified, in contrast to cartilaginous fishes (Chondrichthyes). It is a solitary fish that lives on the seabed, and its habitat is the North Sea, Barents Sea, West Atlantic, Baltic Sea, the waters around the British Isles, the Bay of Biscay, the coast of Norway, and southern Greenland. The skull was part of a collection at the Zoological Institute of the Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, in Kiel, Germany, and was photographed for the project “The Inner Beauty of Fish.”