Description
The Pacific Lingcod : Ophiodon elongatus
These long fish grow to more than five feet (1.5 meters) and range from Alaska to Baja California. Lingcod feed voraciously on various large fishes, crustaceans and mollusks. This predator fish is one of the most highly esteemed sport fish in the Pacific owing to it’s great taste. Commercial fishing has dwindled numbers to alarming levels. Kelp beds were good hunting ground for fish and fishers. Using this very kelp for fishing lines, the coastal peoples in the area fished from long cedar canoes. They are shown in the head of the fish with wedges made of antler and wood, splitting the trunks of large cedar trees into planks. This way of life is now as extinct as is the:
The Sea Otter: Enhydralutris
These mammals, as seen in the cod’s main body, range from Alaska’s coastline to California’s. Amazingly, otters take to the beach only to avoid the worst storms. They feed in the daytime by floating on their backs with a small rock on their chest, which they use to crack open shells. They hide and sleep in the kelp beds, wrapping the cables around themselves at night to secure their position. The otter’s taste for eating sea urchins helps the beds to thrive. In 1911 international treaty forbade the massacre of these mammals which once swam in giant herds and now are rarely sighted. Lack of habitat with increase of populations in these temperate coastal areas makes a brown bear such as the one depicted near the fish’s tail, also, a rare sight indeed.
