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Abstract
Scorpaenidae are small to moderate sized marine bottom-living fishes. They are distributed throughout tropical, temperate and cold water of the world (Kuiter, 1993; Gomon et al., 1994). They usually live among rocks, seaweed meadows and coral reefs while some might live on sandy or muddy bottoms at depths that vary between 2 to more than 200m. Some Scorpaenids, however, were found to occur in depths more than 2,000m (Hureau and Litvinenko, 1986). There are 62 valid species within the genus scorpaena all over the world (Froese and Pauly, 1994). Eight species of them are present in the Mediterranean (Hureau and Litvinenko, 1986).
They are widely known as “Scorpion fishes” due to the well-developed venom glands present under the spines of dorsal, anal and pelvic fins (Poss and Eschmeyer, 2003; Nelson, 2006). Each spine has a separate venom gland at the base. Beyond poison defenses, they have large heads with numerous spines and a terminal and strongly protractile mouth used to capture prey by suction (Hureau and Litvinenko, 1986). The sting of some few species is lethal to human, while in others sting can be extremely painful. They are of low economic importance since they appear in the by-catch. However, they are esteemed as marine food in some countries e.g. France.
Scorpaenidae do not represent a major component of most fishing activities in the Mediterranean countries but constitute a minor component of the catch of commercial line fisheries and well represented in the catch of offshore recreational fisheries (Steffe et al., 1996).
Despite their global distribution published studies on the biology of this large genus have been limited. The species that have been studied tend to be those that grow large and are important component of fisheries; e.g., Scorpaena notata (Hureau and Litvinenko, 1986); Scorpaena gutatta (Love et al., 1987); Scorpaena elongata (Ragonese et al., 2003), Scorpaena maderensis (La Mesa et al., 2005); Scorpaena scrofa (Ordines et al., 2009) and Scorpaena porcus (Bilgin and Çelik, 2009).
In the Egyptian Mediterranean water, Ibrahim and Soliman (1996) mentioned that Scorpanids are among those species categorized within the by-catch of trawl fishes. These authors were able to identify five species. These are; Helicolenus dactylopterus (De Laroche, 1809); Scorpaena notata Rafinesque, 1810; Scorpaena porcus Linneaus, 1758; Scorpaena scrofa Linneaus, 1758 and Sebastapistes nuchalis (Gunther, 1874). On the other hand.