Barfin flounder
Amazing fact
The barfin flounder is brown on the side with its eyes, and white or yellow on the other side.
Музей ННЦМБ ДВО РАН
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
The barfin flounder is brown on the side with its eyes, and white or yellow on the other side.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Barfin flounder
- Scientific name
- Verasper moseri
- Japanese name
- マツカワ
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Order
- Pleuronectiformes
- Family
- Pleuronectidae
- Genus
- Verasper
Where the name “Barfin flounder” comes from
It is also called Takanoha because the stripes on its fins resemble hawk feathers.
北海道立総合研究機構A flounder that lives around Hokkaido, along the coasts of Honshu, and in seas such as those off the Korean Peninsula and the Sea of Okhotsk.
How the Barfin flounder lives
It is a bottom-dwelling fish. It eats fish, large crustaceans and other animals. It spawns during winter and spring.
Музей ННЦМБ ДВО РАНBasic data
- Size
- Body length: about 70 cm
- Range
- Hokkaido coast, Pacific coast from Aomori to Ibaraki, Korean Peninsula coast, northern Sea of Japan, southern Sea of Okhotsk, and elsewhere
- Conservation status in Japan
- Data Deficient (DD)Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Marine Red List (2017)
Where the Barfin flounder has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- マツカワ
- 简体中文
- 条斑星鲽
- 繁體中文
- 條斑星鰈
- 한국어
- 노랑가자미
- Русский
- Вераспер Мозера
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — マツカワChecked: 2026-11-04
- 北海道立総合研究機構 — 第９話 甦った幻の鰈「マツカワ（王鰈）」Checked: 2026-11-07
- Музей ННЦМБ ДВО РАН — Вераспер МозераChecked: 2026-11-07
- Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Marine Red List (2017)Checked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
The conservation status in Japan is the category in the Red Lists of the Ministry of the Environment of Japan, which assess the risk of extinction for wild animals in Japan.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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