About this species
Kopua minima, the Japanese deepwater clingfish, is a clingfish of the family Gobiesocidae, found in the Northwest Pacific, the East China Sea and Japan. This species reaches a length of 3.0 cm (1.2 in). This species was described in 1887 by the German zoologist and paleontologist Ludwig Heinrich Philipp Döderlein from a type collected at a depth of 100-150 fathoms in Sagami Bay, Japan.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Kopua minima”, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the article
Where and when
Where it has been recorded
Worldwide
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Best months
Worldwide (open data)
- January: 0 records
- February: 1 records
- March: 0 records
- April: 2 records
- May: 1 records
- June: 2 records
- July: 15 records
- August: 0 records
- September: 1 records
- October: 1 records
- November: 0 records
- December: 0 records
Depth and water temperature
Depth
Mostly recorded at 1–171 m · Deepest record: 226.5 m
Water temperature
Recorded in surface water of 20–25 °C
Names and classification
Names in 1 more languages
- Japanese
- ヨザクラウバウオ
Other scientific names: Aspasma minima, Kopua japonica, Lepadogaster minimus
Similar species
- Deepwater Clingfish
Kopua kuiteri
Common Shore-eelAlabes dorsalis
Long-snout ClingfishDiademichthys lineatus
Pygmy Shore EelAlabes parvula
Broad ClingfishAspasmogaster costata
Western Cleaner ClingfishCochleoceps bicolor
Sources and credits
Names and taxonomy: WoRMS (CC BY 4.0) and the GBIF Backbone (CC BY 4.0). Photos: iNaturalist observers, each under the licence shown (CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA).
- Depth, temperature, months and maps: records from OBIS and GBIF under CC0 or CC BY.
- Descriptions: Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA, each linked to its article.
- 24 open-data records from 1968 to 2012.
- Species data updated November 3, 2026.
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