Wreckfish
Fish · Last reviewed 2026-08-23
A very large, very long-lived deep-water fish of wrecks, banks and shelf edges worldwide, reaching 100 kg and eighty years, and assessed by the IUCN as Data Deficient.
Safety: barotrauma and pressure injury — can cause injury needing treatment. One more point applies here.
Barotrauma and pressure injury — Can cause injury needing treatment
A fish brought up from 100 to 200 m suffers gas expansion it cannot vent: the swim bladder over-expands, the eyes and stomach are displaced, and a returned fish frequently cannot swim back down. Releasing it looks like a release and is not.
What reduces it: Decide before fishing deep whether the intention is to keep or to return, because a fish from that depth is not reliably releasable. Where release is intended, descender devices are the only approach with evidence behind them, and minimising time at the surface matters more than anything done at the boat.
Catching Wreckfish
What FishingHQ holds on fishing for it. Each entry opens the record behind it.
- Ground
- Where
- 2 places FishingHQ documents — strongest claim anywhere: recorded here · From a boat
The cherne is the deep fish of the Atlantic islands, and almost everything about it is at the far end of a scale. FishBase records a maximum of 210 cm, 100 kg and eighty years of age. It lives from about 40 m down to 600 m, usually between 100 and 200 m. And it is found in the eastern Atlantic from Norway to South Africa, in the western Atlantic, in the Indian Ocean and off New Zealand — one of the most widely distributed large fish in the world.
Adults are bluish-grey above and paler below with blackish-brown fins, with a tall compressed body, a big head and a rough bony ridge across the top of the gill cover that is the single most reliable identification feature. Juveniles are quite different: black-blotched, and famous for living beneath drifting flotsam in open water, which is where the English name comes from.
For an angler in the Canaries it is a deep mark rather than a shore one: the islands' shelf falls away very steeply very close to land, which puts wreckfish ground within reach of a boat trip that is short by the standards of anywhere else.
Its conservation position deserves care. The IUCN assessment is DATA DEFICIENT, last assessed in 2003 — which means the assessors could not determine its status, not that it is fine. A fish that takes decades to grow and aggregates on known structure is the classic profile of a stock that can be fished down before anybody notices.
How it is caught
Why these are here, and the sources (1)
What experienced anglers do — 1 connection
How FishingHQ classifies this: practitioner consensus. Widely and independently recommended by experienced anglers and specialist sources. This is real angling knowledge, not proof: controlled evidence for it is limited, and FishingHQ records it as convention rather than as a demonstrated effect.
Deep-drop fishing
Cherne is named among the deep species of the Canary and Madeiran grounds, reached over wrecks, banks and the shelf edge. The islands' steepness is what makes that a boat trip of twenty minutes rather than of hours.
- Canary Islands regional angling guidance sites — Various Canary-based angling and island guidance publishers (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Canary shore angling practice: the techniques and tackle used from rock, mole and beach, and the species each is used for.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Guías de zonas de pesca en Canarias — Tenerife, Gran Canaria y Lanzarote — GuíaCanarias (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: The techniques named for Canarian shore fishing — rockfishing, jigging, light bottom fishing and squid jigs — and the species attached to them.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Where Wreckfish is documented
Places where public sources describe this species as fished, with how it is fished and how strongly the evidence supports it. This is not a range map and it is not a recommendation — it is what has been written down about a fishery rather than a record of any individual catch, and being listed is never permission to fish.
Canary Islands
2 documented places
Tazacorte and Puerto Naos
Harbour wall
Recorded here
From a boat
Puerto de la Estaca
Harbour wall
Recorded here
From a boat
What these strengths mean
- Recorded here
- At least one credible public account of this species being caught here. That is all it means.
Identification
No photograph of Wreckfish has passed identity review yet, so none is shown. FishingHQ publishes a species photograph only once somebody has confirmed the animal in it against the species record’s own diagnostic features.
- Scientific name
- Polyprion americanus
- Family
- Polyprionidae
- Water
- Saltwater
- Conservation status
- Data Deficient
- Regions
- Mediterranean, Western Europe, Northern Europe, West Africa, North America, Central & South America, New Zealand
- A rough bony ridge running across the upper part of the gill cover — the definitive feature, and one that can be felt as well as seen.
- Tall, compressed body with a very large head and mouth.
- Bluish-grey above, paler below with a silvery sheen, and blackish-brown fins.
- Juveniles black-blotched on head and body, and associated with drifting flotsam in open water.
Size
- Typical
- 5–20 kg (11–44 lb)
- Large
- 30–50 kg (66–110 lb)
Exceptional: FishBase records a maximum of 210 cm and 100 kg, and an age of 80 years
Lifecycle and reproduction
Demersal and oceanodromous over a depth range of about 40 to 600 m, usually 100 to 200 m, holding to wrecks, banks, pinnacles and shelf edges. FishBase records a maximum age of 80 years and LOW resilience.
Slow to mature and long-lived, with a prolonged juvenile phase spent pelagically beneath floating objects before settling to deep structure. Spawning is poorly documented across most of its range.
Feeding and senses
Takes fish, cephalopods and large crustaceans over and around deep structure. Adults are ambush predators tied to the structure they hold on rather than roaming.
Adapted to low light at depth, hunting by sight in what light there is and by lateral line around the structure it holds on. The large eye and large mouth are both what a fish ambushing in near-darkness at a hundred metres needs.
Through the year
Resident on deep structure rather than migratory as an adult, so the fishery is a function of the mark rather than of the month. Aggregation on known structure is the behaviour that makes the species vulnerable to concentrated effort on a small number of places.
Distribution
Eastern Atlantic: Norway to South Africa, including the Mediterranean, Canary Islands, Madeira, Cape Verde, and Tristan da Cunha. Western Atlantic: Newfoundland, Canada and Gulf of Maine to North Carolina, USA. Recorded from Uruguay to Argentina. Western Indian Ocean: St. Paul and Amsterdam islands. Southwest Pacific: New Zealand
This is a biological range — where the species occurs, not a prediction that you will catch one. To browse the fishing geography FishingHQ holds, start at fishing places.
Why anglers care
The deep-water prize of the eastern Atlantic islands, taken on heavy tackle over wrecks, banks and the shelf edge — ground that is unusually close to land in the Canaries because the islands fall away so steeply. Its significance is that it is a genuinely large fish reachable from a short trip, and its slow growth and structure-holding habit mean the same mark does not keep producing indefinitely.
Handling and returning
A very large fish with a very large mouth and heavy spines, brought up from depth. Barotrauma is a near certainty from any real depth, which makes release survival a serious question rather than an assumption. Handle horizontally and support the full weight.
Safety
Barotrauma and pressure injury is set out at the top of this page, where it cannot be missed.
Injury while handling fish — Can cause injury needing treatment
A very large mouth, heavy dorsal spines and a rough bony ridge across the gill cover, on a fish that may weigh more than the person handling it.
What reduces it: Two people to a large fish, gloves, and no hands inside the gill cover or the mouth. Support the body horizontally rather than lifting by the jaw.
Where to go next
Where it lives
- Inshore groundAs an adult, on deep structure — reachable inshore only where the shelf falls away close to land.
- Open oceanAs a juvenile: it lives beneath drifting flotsam in open water before it ever sees the bottom.
Why these are here, and the sources (2)
Backed by research — 2 connections
How FishingHQ classifies this: scientific evidence. Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.
Inshore ground
Recorded as demersal from about 40 to 600 m, usually 100 to 200 m, holding to wrecks, banks and shelf edges. In the Atlantic islands that band lies unusually close to the coast because the islands are volcanic cones.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Environment, depth range, habitat association and distribution for Polyprion americanus.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Open ocean
Polyprion americanus is recorded with a prolonged pelagic juvenile phase associated with floating objects, which is where the English name comes from and is a completely different habitat from the adult's.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Environment, depth range, habitat association and distribution for Polyprion americanus.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Safety reading
Why these are here, and the sources (1)
What experienced anglers do — 1 connection
How FishingHQ classifies this: practitioner consensus. Widely and independently recommended by experienced anglers and specialist sources. This is real angling knowledge, not proof: controlled evidence for it is limited, and FishingHQ records it as convention rather than as a demonstrated effect.
Handling fish safely
A fish brought up from the usual 100 to 200 m band cannot vent the gas it expands on the way; a returned fish frequently cannot swim back down. The decision to keep or return has to be made before fishing that depth rather than at the boat.
- Canary Islands regional angling guidance sites — Various Canary-based angling and island guidance publishers (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Canary shore angling practice: the techniques and tackle used from rock, mole and beach, and the species each is used for.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Guías de zonas de pesca en Canarias — Tenerife, Gran Canaria y Lanzarote — GuíaCanarias (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: The techniques named for Canarian shore fishing — rockfishing, jigging, light bottom fishing and squid jigs — and the species attached to them.States this directlyPassage read and verified
More fish
Not related to this page — just the rest of the section. There is little else joined to this subject yet, and a short page should still lead somewhere.
Sources for this page
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Family, maximum size, depth range, environment, distribution and the IUCN assessment for Polyprion americanus.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species — International Union for Conservation of Nature (Conservation authority)Relied on for: The Data Deficient assessment for Polyprion americanus, assessed 30 April 2003.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Canary Islands regional angling guidance sites — Various Canary-based angling and island guidance publishers (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Which species Canary shore anglers target from rock, mole and beach, with the techniques and baits the Spanish-language regional guidance describes.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy.