Robert N Lea

California Department of Fish and Game (retired) · Marine Resources

This authoritative reference provides an accurate, up-to-date checklist of common and scientific names for all described and taxonomically valid fish species living in fresh and marine waters of North America. This edition reflects numerous taxonomic changes that have occurred since 2004 and includes 3,875 species and 260 families. Provides the rat...

An unusually long period of warm-water temperatures occurred off southern California (USA) in 2014–2018, and the highest sea-surface temperature ever recorded in a 103-year span of continuous data collection occurred in August 2018. Poleward distributional shifts in the geographic range of hundreds of marine organisms worldwide have been documented...

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is a federal, marine protected area located off the central coast of California, USA. Understanding biodiversity, and how it is changing, is necessary to effectively manage the sanctuary. The large size of this sanctuary, which contains a variety of habitats and is influenced by several water masses, provides...

Embiotocidae, a unique family within the Perciformes that has evolved a complex viviparous natural history, has lacked full resolution and strong support in several interspecific relationships until recently. Here we propose three taxonomic revisions within embiotocid surfperches based on recent molecular phylogenetic analyses that robustly resolve...

In our opinion, no morphological or genetic data define popu- lations that have been referred to as the G. robusta complex in the lower Colorado River basin as members of more than one species (i.e., as populations on separate evolutionary trajectories; Simp- son 1961; Wiley 1981). Differences that have been described among localities, and that led...

Members of the AFS/ASIH Joint Committee on the Names of Fishes has completed its review of information on morphological and genetic variation in the genus Gila in the lower Colorado River basin of Arizona and New Mexico (which includes the Little Colorado River, Bill Williams River, Gila River, Verde River, and Salt River drainages) and has conclud...

The use of nursery areas by elasmobranchs is an important life history strategy that is thought to reduce juvenile mortality and increase population growth rates. The endothermic salmon shark Lamna ditropis uses the California Current System (CCS) as a nursery area, though little is known about how juveniles use this ecosystem. Juvenile salmon shar...

In 2013, the seventh edition of the Common and Scientific Names of Fishes from the United States, Canada, and Mexico was published. Major changes include the capitalization of English common names, the addition of French common names for each species found in Canada, and the recognition of occurrences in the Arctic Ocean as separate from the Atlant...

In November 2010 an orange colored rockfish (Sebastes sp.) was caught by hook and line off Avila Beach, San Luis Obispo County, California (35º 14’ N, 120º 64’ W) at a depth of 6 m near the Point San Luis Lighthouse. The fish initially was not identifiable with any of the shallow-water rockfishes, yet had the general conformation of a member of the...

The longfin gunnel, Pholis clemensi, was previously reported to range as far south as Point Arena California in the Pacific Ocean. New observations are documented south to Point Lobos with geo-referenced photographs from remotely operated vehicles extending the known range to 304.5 km. Gunnels, family Pholidae, are small, elongate, laterally-compre...

The wolf-eel (Anarrhichthys ocellatus Ayres, 1855) is an elongate, benthic perciform that inhabits the temperate North Pacific from the southeastern Bering Sea and eastern Aleutian Islands to southern California (Mecklenburg et al. 2002) and occurs from the intertidal zone (Miller and Lea 1972) to the offshore shelf, up to 244 m depth (CAS 19447; s...

This chapter consists mainly of an update of the distributional analysis of California coastal fishes completed more than 25 years ago. The current analysis incorporates range extensions and recent additions of species to the fauna. Given that surface water temperatures generally have warmed in the northeastern Pacific over the last 25 years, that...

We report on 20 confirmed and five purported but unreliable incidents of unpro- voked attacks by white sharks on humans in California and Oregon between 1993 and 2003. All attacks involved white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias). The discus- sion, map, and tables from McCosker and Lea's (1996) report are updated. The majority of attacks occurred at o...

We have constructed an “expert-knowledge classification system” to categorize 309 fish taxa in the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations ichthyoplankton database into primary (coastal, coastal-oceanic, and oceanic) assemblages based on their principal ecological domains and subsequently, secondary assemblages according to the habi...

Big Creek Marine Ecological Reserve (BCER), located off the central California coast, has been closed to fishing since January 1994. We used side scan sonar and an occupied submersible to collect baseline information on species-habitat relationships, density, and species and size composition of fish inside and outside BCER. Forty-three dives were m...

From mid-1997 through 1998, anomalously warm water occurred off the California coast as part of the more global El Niiio phenomenon of 1997-98. Warm- water periods of comparable magnitude were observed in 1957-59 and 1982-84; this most recent event may in fact be the strongest of the three. Biological evidence supporting the impact of this phenomen...

‐A multidisciplinary assess- ment,of benthic ,rockfishes,(genus Se- bastes) and associated,habitats,in deep water,was ,conducted ,in Soquel ,Sub- marine Canyon, Monterey Bay, Califor- nia. Rock habitats,at depths,to 300 m

A new species of cusk-eel of the genus Ophidion is described from the continental shelf waters of the Panamic region of the eastern Pacific Ocean. The species does not appear to be closely related to any other eastern Pacific or western Atlantic cusk-eel. Superficially it manifests a striking resemblance to two distantly related ophidiids, Lepophid...

We report on 20 confirmed and five purported but unreliable incidents of unpro-voked attacks by white sharks on humans in California and Oregon between 1993 and 2003. All attacks involved white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias). The discussion , map, and tables from McCosker and Lea's (1996) report are updated. The majority of attacks occurred at or...

We examined data from our own and published collections of intertidal and shallow littoral fishes of the North American Pacific Coast with respect to temporal and spatial trends in species composition and dominance. We compared (1) recent and past intertidal collections made five and seven years apart, respectively, for two California localities, (...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Miami, 1980. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-188). Includes vita. Photocopy. s

Lepophidium microlepis ranges from Baja California to Peru, a distribution shared with L. negropinna and L. pardale. Unlike its more shallow-dwelling congeners, L. microlepis exhibits marked latitudinal variation in meristic and morphometric characters and in certain features of pigmentation. Three well marked subspecies are defined, two of which,...

A new Californian rockfish, Sebastes rufinanus, is described from two specimens that were killed by an underwater explosion near San Clemente Island (32° 47.8′ N, 118° 20′ W). This dwarf rockfish is distinguished from all other eastern Pacific species of Sebastes, except S. diploproa, by a combination of two characters: a low number of pored scales...

Thesis (M.A. in Zoology)--University of California, Dec. 1968. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-95).