Black scabbardfish (Aphanopus carbo) in Subareas 1, 2, 4–8, 10, and 14, and divisions 3.a, 9.a, and 12.b

Black scabbardfish Aphanopus carbo Lowe, 1839 is a widely distributed species. In the North Atlantic, the species occurs between 30^oN and 70^oN, from the strait of Denmark to Western Sahara, with greatest abundance to the South of the Faroe Islands, in the Rockall Trough, to the west of mainland Portugal, and around Madeira and the Canary archipelagos. It occurs only sporadically north of the Scotland-Iceland-Greenland ridges.

Updated in 2024.

Black scabbardfish is a bathypelagic species which can be found at depths from 200 m, in the northern section of the NE Atlantic (Nakamura and Parin, 1993; Kelly et al., 1998), to 2300 m around the Canary Islands (Pajuelo et al., 2008). Despite this wide bathymetric range, it is more frequent between 800 and 1800 m in mainland Portugal (Martins et al., 1987), 800 and 1300 m in Madeira (Morales-Nin and Sena-Carvalho, 1996), and 400 and 1400 m of the West of the British Isles (Ehrich, 1983; Allain et al., 2003).