The total body length reaches 120 cm, but usually about 90 cm. Weight up to 22.6 kg. The highest recorded life expectancy is 30 years.
Ocean demersal (bottom) fish that lives in the temperate waters of the northwest Atlantic at depths of up to 670 m. Distributed along the Atlantic coast of North America from Quebec and Newfoundland ( Canada ) to northeast Florida ( USA ). In the northern part of its range, the American marine line lives at shallow depths, and in the southern (south of North Carolina ) it is rare in coastal waters, adhering to significant depths. It lives in waters with a wide temperature range from 0 to +21 ° C. It occurs on the bottom covered with different types of soil: sand , gravel , silt , clay , fragments of mollusk shells [3] .
Ambush predator. He spends most of his time waiting for prey, completely motionless, hiding at the bottom, almost merging with him. It feeds mainly on different fish and cephalopods ( squid and cuttlefish ), occasionally eating carrion [3] .
Males of the American marine line ripen for the first time at the age of three years with an average body length of 36.7 cm, and females first mature at the age of four years with an average body length of 48.5 cm. Spawning occurs in May - June. Eggs with a diameter of 1.5-1.8 mm are swept out in a mucus tape reaching 6-12 m in length and 0.15-1.5 m in width. Fertility of females varies from 300 thousand to 2.8 million eggs [4] . The laying of eggs drifts over the surface of the ocean for 6-100 days, depending on the temperature of the water, until the larvae hatch. Juveniles lead a pelagic lifestyle , eating zooplankton . Upon reaching a length of 7 cm, they begin to change their appearance, within a few weeks taking the shape of the body of adult fish and moving on to the bottom lifestyle. Sea devils grow rapidly during their first year of life, then their growth rate slows down. [3]
In 2010, Greenpeace entered the American marine line in its red list of seafood (Greenpeace International Seafood Red list), which include commercial fish species that are under very high threat of extermination due to overfishing [5] .
