Forkbeard

A soft-bodied relative of the cod, built like a small, sad-eyed hake. The body is chocolate to grey-brown, sometimes almost purple in torchlight, with a paler belly and thin pale edging on the fins. The head is blunt with a large mouth and a single short barbel under the chin. The second dorsal fin and the anal fin are long and low and run almost to the tail, giving it a rippling, skirted outline, and the pelvic fins are reduced to a pair of long trailing filaments that it holds out in front like feelers.

It is a night fish and a cave fish. By day it lies up under overhangs, in the back of caverns and in rock crevices, usually hanging motionless a few centimetres off the floor. It comes out after dark to hunt small fish, crabs and shrimp over rock and sand. Most are 25 to 35 cm; the maximum is about 65 cm.

Around Malta, Gozo and Comino it is one of the classic finds of a cave dive - Santa Marija Caves, Billinghurst, the Inland Sea tunnel and the overhangs along the Gozo cliffs all hold them - and it also appears deeper on the walls. Divers meet it from about fifteen metres down, and it becomes commoner with depth.